Green is for chlorophyll
by Arasinyah
Summary: "You're the most powerful sorceress on record?" He confirmed. "I usually go with magician or illusionist but sure, sorceress works." She shrugged. (Set during Avengers)
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but Willow.**

* * *

_Green is for chlorophyll_

_by Arasinyah_

_Chapter 1_

"Damn it, how are we going to get her out of there without looking like kidnappers."

"Or mob enforcers."

The two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents watched from the car as a young-ish woman put on a magic show in the park. The full skirt of the vintage dress swirled around her as she bent down to pull a rose from behind a crying girl's ear earning her a blinding smile and the agents winced. They could practically hear all the complaints they were about to receive over this.

"I wish the Black Widow was here." Agent 1 whined and Agent 2 shuddered thinking of the last encounter between him and the Black Widow. It seemed to be all the motivation he needed and he girded himself and stepped out of the car, Agent 1 following close behind.

"We have a job to do." He said succinctly and strode toward the woman, the crowd of parents and children parting before him. He would have felt more like Moses before the Red Sea if they hadn't proceeded to glare at him viciously.

"Miss Doyle?" He said as nicely as he could when he came to a stop in front of the woman.

"I prefer Ms not Miss." She said in a voice that seemed to be made for laughter, the smile never leaving her face and she didn't even turn to look at Agent 2 as he tried to be his most Coulson like self. He felt the glares aimed at him intensify and a bead of sweat trailed down his neck and into his collar. He once had to go to a toy store on the day before Christmas to get his nephew a present, he knew how nasty parental units could be. Suppressing the shudder that came with memories of that day he took a deep breath, already regretting what he had to say.

"You'll have to come with us Ms Doyle." He could feel _them_ stepping closer to surround them and Agent 1 practically splayed himself across Agent 2's back in an attempt to avoid them. But even worse was the reaction of the children in front of them.

"You can't take her away!" The girl who now had a rose tucked in her hair cried, grabbing Ms Doyle's leg pathetically and she shot the Agents a puppy dog look that made the parents behind them even angrier. He stepped closer to Ms Doyle in an attempt to get away from the parents.

"Now, now Millie we both know I had to go any way, it's almost time for us all to go home, it's getting very dark now and magic has time limits." Ms Doyle said, a mysterious inflection to her voice, making magical gestures with her hand and winked.

"It does?" Millie's eyes widened.

"Yes it does." Ms Doyle stood up and clapped her hands. "Everybody please pay attention it is time for the show to end!" She said and sunk into a flamboyant bow and people began grumbling and reluctantly clapped while the children wailed. "But because the show is ending a bit early I have one last trick to show."

Oohs and Ahs were in abundance and everyone gathered around her, the Agents quickly pushed to the back of the crowd by mom's with purses that felt like they were stuffed with bricks.

"What do you think she's going to do?" Agent 1 asked Agent 2 enthusiastically. He'd never been to a magic show. Well except for the thing with that Thor guy but that didn't count, a lightning pole could do what that guy did.

"I don't care." Agent 2 gritted out and wilted at the glare the father in front of him shot him.

Before Agent 1 could answer however, Ms Doyle began her trick. A pale blue smoke started to form at her feet, slowly crawling upwards until her whole body was hidden from view and with a crack the smoke disappeared, Ms Doyle along with it.

"Where did she go?!" Agent 2 panicked. If Director Fury found out they'd lost her, he would be Fury-ous. He made a mental note to stop taking on assignments involving Tony Stark and they fought and pushed their way through the now dissipating crowd to get to where she had been when she disappeared, hoping to see scorch marks or anything to prove she had been there and wasn't just a figment of their imagination. The spot appeared unmarked, nothing distinguished the grass there from the grass anywhere else on the park and Agent 1 and 2 were alarmed.

Their thoughts were interrupted when Agent 2's cellphone began ringing. It was an unregistered number but then most S.H.I.E.L.D. numbers were too and so without a second thought he picked up the call.

"Hello?" He said into it hoping against hope it wasn't Director Fury because he had no idea how to inform him that they'd lost Ms Doyle.

"I'm in the car, genius." He turned to their parked car and Ms Doyle was sitting in the passenger seat waving her hand at him. "I call shotgun!"

Wordlessly he pointed her out to Agent 1 who grumbled about losing his seat and they made their way over to the nondescript black sedan.

"Took you long enough." She snorted.

"We thought you disappeared."

"Neat trick by the way." Agent 1 said his chagrin at being delegated to the back seat disappearing once she pulled a tissue from behind his ear for him to wipe the sweat off with.

"Let me guess, you guys made field agents a year ago but because of the events in New Mexico you haven't been able to do anything agent-y because you're still stuck on clean up duty." She rolled her eyes. "I swear, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s training is getting worse and worse, I mean really, did you have to act like you've stepped out of a Men In Black movie? All you had to do was just put away the sunglasses and unbutton your collars, maybe smile a bit and you wouldn't be treated with as much hostility. I hope you aren't going undercover anytime soon." She snorted.

"How did you know that we're from S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

"The gross incompetence." She teased with a smile. "And I can smell the stench of the helicarrier on you from seven feet away."

"Ms Doyle-"

"Call me Willow."

"...W-W-Willow?" Agent 2 trembled.

"You're _the_ Willow? Really?" Agent 1 was skeptical.

"Yes."

"As in granddaughter of Juniper, Willow?"

"I just call her Grammy but sure, Juniper works."

"You're the most powerful sorceress on record?" Agent 2 confirmed.

"I usually go with magician or illusionist but sure, sorceress works." She shrugged. "Oh and it's second most powerful sorceress. Granny's better but she only uses magic when she's angry and when she gets angry it's usually the end of the world which is never good. Of course she also refers to herself as a witch so I suppose I am the most powerful _sorceress_ on record but that's just semantics."

Agent 1 and 2 were now quiet. Before, Agent 2 thought he could intimidate her but now that he knew who she was, he was the one intimidated instead. He had heard vague stories about her, that even the Black Widow did her best to avoid her and Agent Hill needed to go in for a psych evaluation after every encounter with Willow.

This was not good.

Agent 1 on the other hand was now disgruntled. He had been excited about the magic tricks before but now he just felt gypped. Most powerful sorceress in the world and she used the 'You've got something behind your ear' trick? Lame!

"So boys, where is this road trip taking me?"

"New Mexico, we have orders to bring you to the Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S facility."

"That's going to be a bit of a drive. You want me to just poof us there?" She asked conversationally while fiddling with the radio settling on a New Age Music station and he cringed.

"Poof?" Agent 1 inquired from the back seat while Agent 2 began sweating anew.

"Well yeah, like teleport." She snapped her fingers. "Like I did back at the park only long-distance."

"That won't be necessary, and we're not driving there." Agent 2 interrupted. He knew that his partner would probably agree if to it if only to see the magic trick and he wasn't quite feeling up to interstate teleportation. He pulled into the parking lot of a private air field and within minutes all three were seated in a quinjet, Willow sitting in the back while the two commandeered the aircraft. It took less than half an hour for them to reach the facility and when they did it was to a sight that was unexpected.

The entire facility was in chaos, men running around, cars being loaded and armed personnel were directing people to cars while a voice blared over the speakers.

"All personnel, the evacuation order has been confirmed proceed to-"

"Fury called me in so I could be evacuated from the place? That hardly seems fair." Willow complained, calmly walking off the quinjet and stretching her back leisurely while the agents went to Agent Coulson to find out what to do next. Before they could ask though, a helicopter descended on the facilities and Agent Hill followed by Agent Fury soon stepped out.

"Nick!" Willow said and while all the agents in the director's sight of vision took a healthy step back she disregarded the rules of safety that every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent knew and threw an arm casually around Director Fury who stiffened immediately.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Sir you asked us to bring her here." Agent 1 piped up before Agent 2 had the chance to say anything and Fury's nostrils flared in anger.

"Bet you wish you had hair to pull out right about now." Willow teased and Fury's mouth twitched into a hint of a snarl before settling down.

"I want you two out of here, evacuate with the rest of them," He ordered the two who took the opportunity to walk away as fast as they could without running before pointing at Willow who simply grinned. "And you, you come with me."

Willow smiled out of habit. She hadn't been very happy to be pulled away from her magic show, she hadn't been very happy when she'd been riding in the quinjet with the two agents and she was definitely not happy about following Fury around like a lost puppy. But she smiled through it anyway.

Her grandmother had always told her that when you smile no matter where you are, eventually the smile turns real. While Willow had found that to be the case often, she had her own reasons for smiling. For one, it freaked out all S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who were unused to emotions in general and for another it annoyed Fury very much and always kept him guessing.

"How bad is it?" Fury asked Coulson as they walked around the facility, Willow and Agent Hill following close behind.

"That's the problem sir, we don't know." Nick Fury drew in a deep breath and while he and Coulson conversed she took the chance to talk to Agent Hill.

"Maria, how's it going?" Willow asked the tall brunette sweetly and Agent Hill flinched.

"Fine." She hissed before turning her attention back to the two men. "It just turned itself on?"

"What are the energy levels now?"

"Climbing. When Selvig couldn't shut it down we ordered evac."

"How long to get everyone out?"

"And shouldn't I be evacuated with them?" Willow interrupted. "I don't enjoy people wasting my time like this."

"Half an hour." Coulson replied to Fury, ignoring Willow.

"Do better." Fury said and they parted ways. Willow just stood there with her arms crossed. "You come with me." He repeated.

"No." She stood there with her arms crossed.

"Fine then, stay with Hill." He turned to Agent Hill. "I need you to make sure that phase 2 prototypes are shipped out."

"Sir is that really a priority right now?"

"Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on." Willow couldn't control the gurgle of laughter at that and for the millionth time Fury glared at her.

"That just sounded _ridiculously_ dramatic."

He ignored her. "Clear out the tech below. Every piece of phase 2 on a truck and gone."

"Yes sir." Hill walked off with Willow following close behind. "With me." She told the two armed officers who were standing outside the facility and the four made their way to the loading dock.

"Anti-climatic." Willow said, pouting as she watched the last piece of the phase 2 technology being driven off by two agents.

She sat on the concrete edge of the bay, swinging her legs with her head rested on the railing. Hill stood next to her waiting for orders, her hands clasped behind her back. The two didn't have to wait long, the second the truck carrying the weapons went out of their line of sight a ripple of energy was felt pulsing through the facility. Hill ignored it but it had Willow standing up and looking in the direction it had originated from, her hair standing on its end.

"Something's wrong." The ceiling began to fall off in bits but Hill still waited for her orders. Willow backed up and moved to a corner in the shadows. Before long four men came walking out the facility, none of them familiar to Willow but one of them stood out in particular. He carried a sceptre and wore a strange armour but it was the way he was trembling that caught her attention. Weak like a little kitten who had only just been rescued and might strike out in fear.

"I need these vehicles." The one who was walking in front said and Willow shrunk back until she was certain they couldn't see her.

"Who's that?" Hill frowned, having noticed the same strange man that Willow had but the agent continued in his path.

"They didn't tell me."

She turned around and Willow gestured for her to come closer to where she was standing and she almost made it before her radio crackled.

"Hill! Do you copy? Barton has turned."

In a matter of seconds, Hill was shot at, evaded those shots and fired off a few of her own as the truck sped off.

"They have the Tesseract shut them down."

Willow raced forward taking the driver's seat while Hill slid into the passenger and in a manoeuvre that made Agent Hill proud, Willow drove the jeep out into the tunnels with stunning speed. The smell of burning rubber invigorated the agent and she shot at the truck as Willow swerved to avoid a car that the sickly man had just blown up with his sceptre.

"Take a left I know a shortcut, we can cut them off there." Hill shouted to be heard over the sound of falling rubble and screeching tires and Willow swung the steering wheel around to follow those orders. Within seconds they pulled up in front of the truck and Hill got up, turning around to shoot at Barton and he shot back. When one of her bullets hit the car close enough to worry him he accelerated further, hitting the back of the jeep and it squirreled as Willow lost control of it.

She regained control but was farther behind the other truck now and behind them the ceiling that had been falling in bits and pieces was now collapsing completely, a wave of destruction left in its wake. They were nearly out of the tunnels when a piece of the roof fell onto the car and Willow grabbed Agent Hill's arm, teleporting them to safe ground before the concrete could hit them.

"You're bleeding!" Willow said pointing to a point on Hill's arm that she could feel throbbing in and Hill coughed, the dust that had been kicked up when the roof had begun falling getting to her.

"A bullet grazed me, I'll be fine."

The radio crackled again and Coulson's voice filtered over it.

"Director? Director Fury, do you copy?"

"The Tesseract is with a hostile force. I have men down. Hill?" Fury said

"A lot of men still under, don't know how many survivors." Agent Hill said, looking around to regain her bearings.

"And our friend Willow?"

"She's here with me." Agent Hill confirmed, ignoring Willow's complaints that she wasn't Fury's friend.

"Sound the general call. I want every living soul not working rescue looking for that briefcase."

"Roger that." When Hill coughed again Willow thumped her back gently.

"You should get that looked at." She gestured towards the bullet graze on Hill's arm but before Hill could react the radio crackled again and this time Willow shot the device a look.

"Coulson report to base this is a Level seven . As of right now we are at war." Fury said and a strange high pitched squeal came from Willow.

"Well," She said as she and Agent Hill exchanged a look. "That was dramatic."


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but Willow.**

* * *

_Green is for chlorophyll_

_by Arasinyah_

_Chapter 2  
_

Willow was not fond of S.H.I.E.L.D., in fact she sometimes downright hated the organisation and she tried her best not to hate anything at all. In the name of defence they did some horrific things and somehow absolved themselves of any guilt towards it. She hated everything that they stood for.

The funding S.H.I.E.L.D. got could solve world hunger, their extensive intelligence network that spanned the globe could be used for unlimited schools, they could fix the whole world and instead they waited for someone else to start a war so they could call themselves heroes. Their priorities were the absolute opposite of her own and she was very annoyed by how often she found herself associated with them despite that.

But she liked Coulson and Maria was sensible, if a bit stiff. And it was for that reason that she allowed herself to be ferried off to the helicarrier where Nick Fury was waiting for her. They walked down the deck of the helicarrier as it floated in the ocean. She wasn't quite sure why they weren't airborne yet but assumed some of the important players were yet to arrive.

"Willow, glad you could make it."

"Nicholas why am I here?" Fury's face twitched into a momentary sulk at her casual usage of his name but he resumed walking and she did her best to follow.

"I need you to tell me Loki's next move."

"You forget that I need to actually be around a person to look in their consciousness." And even then she wouldn't know what he was planning, having vague ideas of what a person is feeling did not give her absolute knowledge on their minds. She was getting crabby, being so far away form any form of nature irking her.

"He's a sorcerer, you're a sorceress, I could use your insight."

"He's a sorcerer from another world that I know nothing of and you know very little of. I have no insight." She looked at his profile, walking quickly to keep up with his stride and frowned. "But you called me in before he was here, before you knew there was magic involved. Why?"

They were on the bridge by now, Maria giving out orders keeping everyone calm. When she saw Willow she nodded and shot her the tiniest of smiles that had a nearby agent gasping. He got over it soon when Hill ripped into him for not paying attention to his work station.

Fury led her to a conference table and swiped his finger on the table in a smooth motion, and dark walls descended around them. Across from her she could see a big curved screen running along the opposite wall and they both sat down. A moment of silence followed and she raised an eyebrow while Fury balled his tongue in his cheek and got up.

Willow had seen him do this before, the whole thing with him making himself seem as big as possible in an attempt to look intimidating. It usually succeeded but when she rested her arms on the table cupping her chin in a palm, bored, he gave in and sat down across from her.

"There was a plan for an initiative, a risky one. The thought behind it was that we would bring together the most powerful people in existence together to form a response team. You were considered for it initially but the idea was dropped."

"Why?"

"You don't fight. The response team was to be retaliatory but retaliation of any kind is not something you are capable of. Besides that, the people in consideration for this team were volatile and unstable. Eventually the entire idea was scrapped."

"If I was dropped from this team and then the team was dropped in its entirety, why was I called in?" Willow said as politely as she could.

She could sense the agitation in him even though he was trying to keep it under wraps. Fury was unsettled and scared and those two emotions pooled with the kind of power he wielded was rarely a good combination.

"Because I'm bringing them in anyway and I could use you."

"Yes, but you're not giving me a good reason to be useful."

It was a bad habit of hers Willow knew but she just couldn't stop it, she still felt an intrinsic need to be as difficult as possible and play. With Nick Fury who had lied to her repeatedly on many occasions this urge came more frequently, almost frightening her with its intensity. He had almost gotten blood on her hands and she would never be able to forgive him for that.

"Willow please," He was almost begging and that was enough to get her to sit up properly and take it a bit more seriously. "I'm giving you full access to all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files, anything you might need. I need you to do whatever you can to predict Loki's next move. Coulson and Black Widow are on the move, they're going to bring in some of the members of the Avenger's initiative, you can read all about them in our files."

Willow was fairly shocked. That an intelligence agency was willingly giving away all the information they had in an attempt to stop…whatever this Loki guy was bringing was enough of an incentive for her.

"Alright, fine." She conceded.

Fury grinned and Willow resisted the urge to shudder. When Fury smiled people usually ended up dying horrific deaths.

"I'm going to be leaving as well, if all goes well Coulson, Romanoff and I will be bringing the members of the Avengers' initiative. You get to work on Loki."

With those brusque words and another swipe on the table the walls around them went up again and Willow blinked in the sudden light before following him to where Agent Hill was standing.

"Sir?"

"Agent Hill I'm leaving you in charge for the next twelve hours, give Willow anything she needs."

"Yes sir." Agent Hill confirmed to the air that was left behind as Nick Fury practically ran up to the deck and Willow followed her out to the bridge.

"So I'm assuming Loki is the pale sickly man in the back of the truck?"

"Yes, he took two of our agents with him and Erik Selvig, a thermonuclear astrophysicist. One of the agents' body was found just off a road in New Mexico so as of right now he has Agent Barton and Selvig with him."

"How did he do that? He's never been here before but he already has followers?"

"The glowing sceptre he had with him, it did something to these people, mind-control is the closest way to describe it.

"What do we know about Loki?"

"Nothing, Thor didn't mention him in any detail, most of our intel is gathered from the mythology surrounding them and we already know it is incorrect to a great extent because it says that Loki is Odin's blood brother whereas Thor claimed him to be his brother and Odin to be their father. He is supposed to be a trickster God and a liesmith."

"That's not good enough, we need to know what he knows. We need an Erik Selvig and an Agent Barton."

"We don't have them," Agent Hill shot her a look that said 'Duh', "that's actually the problem right now."

"Alright, this Erik Selvig, what kind of scientist is he?"

"Textbook scientist, tunnel vision, pretty impractical, like he's from a comic book."

"Right, then he won't be the practical one of the bunch so it's all up to Barton to get them help and materials, what level clearance does he have?"

"Level 3."

"Okay then on that basis of clearance he'll know of some of the organisations S.H.I.E.L.D. gets help from, yes? Shut off his access to them and get into contact with any of your undercover agents who might be able to tell you if any of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s enemies are being particularly active since yesterday. Check for any unscheduled flights with the scientist on them, he's the one most likely to slip up I don't think Barton would be found unless he wants to be."

Maria nodded to one of the agents nearby and he got to work.

"I also need to talk to an astrophysicist, is there any such person we can get in touch with? If they've worked with Erik before then that would be better."

"There's Jane Foster, she's one of the people who came in contact with Thor last year so we moved her to one of our more remote facilities."

"Send her all of Selvig's notes, see if she can make any sense of them and tell us what they'll need for the next step."

"Consider it done."

A few minutes passed by in peace and then willow sighed breaking it.

"This is the annoying part isn't it?"

"What is?"

"The waiting."

Agent Hill snorted. "The paperwork is worse than the waiting."

The two women exchanged a grin.

"Do I have a room in this place?"

"I'll have someone escort you."

"And I shall compulsively read every file in the S.H.I.E.L.D. database." Willow deflated. "Fun."

She tried her best to settle into her room but failed. Willow was unused to living in metal containers floating in the ocean and the hive of activity that it was made it even less conducive to clear thinking.

She flipped through the files available to her, watched the videos of everybody in action carefully; Stark in his Iron Man avatar zooming about, Thor and the Destroyer, Captain America with his shield and Dr Banner all hulked out. There was even a short film of Natasha and the rogue agent Barton in battle together in Budapest and she filed away the little details she noticed about them absentmindedly before turning to the footage of the moment when Loki came to Earth.

A certain moment in particular interested her, Loki with his newly established entourage was walking out of the facility when he stumbled hard and one of the agents he'd been controlling stabilised hm. He was weak, perhaps weak from all the effort spent in travelling via Tesseract but it went farther than that. The smudges under his eyes were the yellow of a fading bruise, not just dark circles. He wasn't just exhausted, he was injured.

Even after he was done disarming practically everyone in the facility in a matter of seconds the way he looked at the sceptre was odd. As if in awe of its power, like a boy with a new toy not like a man with a plan.

Now she wished she hadn't left with Agent Hill that time and stayed with Fury instead. If she had been there in the room then maybe she would know, maybe she would feel what he felt. But part of her was afraid of what she would see. It was just as she put away the file that a tapping sound on her window broke her out of her thoughts.

What she saw surprised her but didn't shock her. Two ravens, each one larger than her whole arm waited patiently for her to open the window. She had read about them and wondered if they were real or yet another way in which mythology deviated from Asgard's reality.

"Huginn and Muninn I presume?"

_"My lady."_ The two spoke in unison and she opened the window letting them in. She looked at the camera that S.H.I.E.L.D. had hidden in her room and told them it was fine in sign language, knowing full well that someone or the other was bound to be watching. Voyeurs, the whole lot of them.

"May I ask what you're doing here?"

_"The Allfather asked us to watch over his sons." _They said. Absently she wondered if they were actually speaking or if she was the only one who could hear them. It wasn't unusual for creatures to talk to her and for her to talk back but rarely did someone else understand them.

"Then why are you in my room?"

_"The Allfather sends a message."_ Huginn said.

_"Thor is coming."_ Muninn completed.

"And will he be here soon?"

_"His voyage through the space between worlds is harder than ours."_

_"It will take him a day."_

"And in the mean time, perhaps you can help me?"

_"We are at your service my lady."_

_"What would you ask of us?"_

Willow thought it over carefully before deciding what she really needed to know."Tell me about Loki."

Hours later Willow walked out of her room, knowing more about Thor and Loki and Asgard than anyone else on Earth did. Huginn and Muninn followed behind her closely and when she reached the bridge they took up posts on either side of her seat at the conference table. Agent Hill approached her looking at the two birds carefully and chose not to sit.

"New pets?"

"No these are Odin's…." She turned to the two, "What would you like to be called?"

_"We are Odin's thoughts and his memory, "_ Huginn said.

_"His eyes and his ears,"_ Muninn followed.

_"We see all that he wishes to see and we perceive what he cannot." _They chorused.

Willow raised an eyebrow before turning back to Agent Hill. Upon seeing the confused look on her face Willow realised that the ravens could only be understood by her.

"They are Odin's…companions." She paraphrased what had been told to her and the two raven made a noise that sounded like laughter. "They've been telling me about Loki."

Agent Hill stepped forward her hands on her hips authoritatively."And?"

"Well if we're going off past encounters with him then," Willow took a deep breath before deflating, "We're screwed."

"What?" Agent Hill was not amused.

"He's smart and cautious. And he's never lost a battle. In unarmed combat he's good and things like bullets won't kill him. In armed combat he is _really_ good and can adapt to almost any weapon easily. Also he's well versed in battle strategies and was part of Odin's council during the last big war they had which was five hundred years ago. So he also has more experience than all of us."She thought over her choice of words and added one. "Combined."

"But we can go off what we know right?" Willow could feel the panic reeking off Hill even though she was standing stock still.

"No that's where the good news comes in, apparently he fell into a void a year ago and has picked up new tricks like the mind control sceptre and Tesseract manipulation during that time. Unfortunately he learnt these skills while under great emotional duress and he's going to take out all his anger on our world."

"That's good news?"

"Yes, people who are emotionally involved make mistakes, they can be manipulated . Agent Romanoff taught me that." Willow grinned sarcastically. She was not fond of the redhead.

"Doesn't sound like much good news." Agent Hill's hands clenched at her sides.

_"You forgot the message." _Muninn reminded her.

"Oh yes, and apparently Thor's coming to town."

After a beat Agent Hill's face contorted into a relatively impressed look. "Better."


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but Willow.**

* * *

_Green is for chlorophyll_

_by Arasinyah_

_Chapter 3  
_

It wasn't long before Nick Fury returned to the helicarrier. When he had put agent Hill in charge for twelve hours he had timed it perfectly. Between long conversations with the two ravens and convincing Agent 2 aka Trevor, who had been assigned a workstation at the helicarrier deck while Agent 1 (Aaron) was on quinjet duty, that there was no way he would be able to beat her high score in Galaga, Fury had arrived in style and pomp, his leather duster swishing behind him.

The man reeked of drama.

"So you were going to bring in a member of the Avengers initiative?" She asked him, curious.

"Captain America will be coming in tomorrow morning, Agent Romanoff and Dr Banner are on their way back from India, they should be arriving sometime early in the morning and Agent Coulson is on his way to Stark tower right now to talk to Iron Man."

Willow clapped excitedly. "We're putting the gang back together, fun!"

Huginn and Muninn swooped down from where they had perched on the higher railings of the helicarrier and landed on either side of her. She turned to say hello to them and when she turned back to him Fury had a gun out.

"What the hell?!"

"Oh sorry, I forgot that you weren't here for that part. Nicholas, meet Huginn and Muninn, they're Odin's eyes and ears on Earth and they've been telling me all about Loki."

_"You forgot the message again."_ Muninn reminded her.

_"It's the reason we were sent here in the first place, you can't just keep on forgetting about it." _Huginn chided.

"Oh and Thor is going to be coming to Earth to help us out and take Loki back with him to face Asgardian justice. He should be here sometime tomorrow." She said brightly and Fury pressed down upon the bridge of his nose with shaking hands.

"You couldn't tell me this when I reached here an hour ago?"

She tilted her head quizzically. "You're _really_ going to complain about _me_ accidentally withholding information? Because if you are, then I'm going to have to laugh in your face. Repeatedly."

A muscle in his jaw clenched and he turned to Agent Hill who was listening in on the conversation with barely hidden smugness. "What the hell is taking Coulson so long?"

* * *

Tony stood in front of the holographic images of members of the Avengers initiative in action. While he did not enjoy being handed things, unlike Pepper, he also didn't want to risk annoying her. Besides that, Pepper was right, Phil (when did they talk so much that she got his name?) _was_ pretty shaken up and his mind did immediately jump to the Avengers initiative that he'd been informed about a few months ago.

He had already seen most of these files; the one of Captain America was something he was intimately familiar with since his father had been shoving stories about the great Captain down his throat before he could even understand them.

He especially looked forward to meeting with Bruce Banner in particular, a man of science who harboured a giant green berserker in him, he sounded fascinating. The Thor fellow wasn't much of his type, all brawn and no brain and the thought of reconciling magic and science was not one his technophile mind could take.

But there was new file in this, one of a girl. While the videos of the others consisted of them breaking things her video consisted of a magic show in a park. She was surrounded by children and simply playing around. Tony wondered how the hell her files had gotten mixed up with those of the likes of the Hulk.

"Agent Coulson, you've given me the wrong file." He said while Pepper looked at the rest in a mixture of astonishment and resignation.

"No, that's Willow, she's part of the Avengers initiative as well." Coulson stepped forward.

"Her name wasn't in the files I saw before."

"She was the first one to be considered for the Avengers actually but that idea was dropped. As you can see she's not much of a fighter."

That much was obvious, the rest of the files had damage estimates attached to them which generally exceeded the six figure ballpark, but she did not.

"Then why is her file here? What does she do?" Tony asked the agent and Coulson squirmed.

Phil found it hard to describe what Willow did. He wasn't afraid of her hurting people and breaking things, or causing mayhem like Tony, he didn't have to worry about her using a hammer to control thunder but she scared him nevertheless.

The agents who only had basic clearance didn't understand why most of the senior agents were so skittish around her but took their cues from them anyway and were afraid of her. In S.H.I.E.L.D. she was practically an urban legend, there were stories about her that would put most serial killers to shame and yet they were completely untrue. Willow had a quality about her, she calmed everyone down and brought a sense of serenity down on them but when Coulson looked at her he saw all the people he could not save. She induced feelings of guilt even in Agent Romanoff, Nick Fury himself almost seemed to feel things like regret and sorrow when she was there. She brought out the humanity in them and for an intelligence agency that was bad news. They couldn't afford to feel repentant for what they had done anywhere other than in the on board psychologist's office.

"She's with us in an advisory capacity." Was all Phil said before stepping back and allowing them to talk amongst themselves and the two accepted it at face value although Tony made a note to needle some more information out of Agent Coulson as soon as he could.

Pepper sighed from next to him, mouth agape in astonishment. "I'm going to take the jet to DC tonight."

"Tomorrow." Tony wanted what little time he could have with Pepper before having to buckle down to do the S.H.I.E.L.D. assignment/

"You've got homework. You've got a lot of homework."

"Well what if I...didn't?"

"If you didn't?"

"Yeah."

"You mean if you finished?" Tony nodded, anticipating the colourful treat that Pepper would give him for being a good boy. "Well, um…then…"

The suggestions she whispered into Tony's ears left him again astounded by his partner's creativity and considering how much he'd gotten around that was really saying something.

"Square deal, fly safe." He said, never having been more motivated to do his 'homework'. Only Pepper would be able to find a way to make S.H.I.E.L.D. assignments enticing.

With a simple 'Work hard' the two left him in his big penthouse alone and he picked up the holographic projection of the Tesseract in his hand and thought over it carefully. Working hard to create clean energy while not bringing in one of the biggest players in clean energy? Even S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't that asinine. Absently he fingered the tiny bolt sized hacking implant he'd been working on, glad to have a new guinea pig.

He'd make S.H.I.E.L.D. regret bringing him in if it was the last thing he did.

* * *

The next day dawned early for Willow, earlier than the rest of the people on the ship at least. After a long argument the night before, Fury had allowed her to sleep on a lifeboat that was towed around by the helicarrier. She had outright refused to sleep in her quarters, finding the sparse metallic interiors of it claustrophobic and cold. A tiny little boat with a bright orange covering had been set up as her temporary living space and she slept under the stars lulled by the soft waves of the ocean and distant sound of whales.

Willow woke with the sun, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes the second the first rays of sunlight hit her. Huginn and Muninn had flown off sometime during the night leaving her all alone except for the occasional fish that came up to surface to talk to her. She had tried to coax a little whale to come closer but it had been too terrified of the helicarrier and talked to her from a distance and as the behemoth of a ship slowly came to life, even that whale went away leaving her alone.

When the sharp sound of a quinjet drawing closer filled the air she pulled the boat alongside the helicarrier and climbed up the side onto the deck. By the time she was finally up the quinjet had landed and Natasha stepped off it with a man that she assumed to be Bruce Banner.

"Hi, you must be Dr Banner." She said sticking a hand out with a big smile and he faltered in his steps before reaching out to engage her in a firm handshake.

"Uh hi."

"I'm Willow."

"Bruce Banner. But you already knew that."

"Fury gave me homework." She shrugged. "I hear you were in Kolkata."

"Yeah I thought it would be best if I was removed from this sort of an environment." He wryly gestured at the deck where soldiers were doing their morning drills.

"If your control depends upon your environment then it's not really very good though." She said conversationally and Agent Romanoff stepped forward.

"Uh Willow, don't they need you on the bridge?" Natasha said, placing herself directly between her and Dr Banner.

"No they don't. If they did, they would tell me." Willow put a hand on Natasha's arm, smiling and she backed off. "So Kolkata huh, you must have played a lot of cricket."

"I mainly played doctor actually." He paused, thinking over his words carefully while her grin grew wider. "That did not come out right."

"Depends upon your definition of right." She said in a laughing voice and for the first time since they'd met Natasha saw a genuine smile on Banner's face. The atmosphere of camaraderie was broken when yet another quinjet landed on the deck.

"Excuse me for a second." Natasha told the two and went to greet whoever was coming out of the quinjet. She came back a few seconds later with Captain America in tow.

"…vintage, he's very proud." They caught the last snippet of what she was saying before Captain America came forward.

"Dr Banner." He said and as the two men shared a handshake they took each others' measures.

"Oh hi, they told me you were coming."

"Word is you can find the cube."

Banner put his hands together and fidgeted looking around nervously. "Is that the only word on me?"

"Only word I care about."

Natasha stepped forward and a put a hand on Willow's back as she watched the two men bond.

"They need you on the bridge, a Jane Foster is returning your call."

Willow waved at Banner behind Captain America's back and went inside.

The second she was in Hill's line of sight she was directed to a work station where Jane Foster was waiting for her on a video call.

"Hi, you must be Jane, I'm Willow."

_"Hello Agent Willow-"_

"Oh no just plain Willow please."

_"Umm okay?"_

"So I sent over whatever we had of Erik Selvig's notes, I was wondering if you could tell me about them?"

_"Like an explanation? Because that could take a while."_

"Well I won't be able to understand it any way but if there was any way to predict what the next step might be."

_"Oh, I'll have to go through the notes again, would you mind calling me back in a couple of hours?"_

"Sure."

That said the video call was shut. Willow looked around her, noticing the sudden activity on the bridge and realised the helicarrier was preparing to take off.

"All engines operating." Agent Hill announced. "S.H.I.E.L.D. emergency protocol 193.6 in effect." She turned to where Fury stood. "We're at level sir."

"Good, let's vanish." Fury said. With that command the reflector panels were engaged and the ship turned invisible. Willow was certain that he was hamming it all up for Captain America and Dr Banner, Nick Fury always did put on one hell of a performance.

Unsure of where she was supposed to go Willow looked in between Coulson, Hill and Fury before choosing to stand next to Dr Banner instead.

"You get used to it." She told the scientist softly.

"It feels-"

"Claustrophobic, I know. It's not just you." His face contorted in relief but went back to its tense state as Fury strode up to them.

"Doctor thank you for coming." Fury said in the gentlest voice she had ever heard him use. It was almost as frightening as his smile.

"Thanks for asking nicely. So, how long am I staying?"

"Once we get our hands on the Tesseract you're in the wind."

"Where are you with that?" Banner suddenly gained confidence now that they were talking about something he knew.

"We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cell phones, laptops. If it's connected to a satellite it's eyes and ears for us."

"That's still not going to find them in time." Natasha said worriedly looking at a file of Agent Barton on one of the workstations. Willow wondered what kind of person this Agent Barton must have been to elicit such a reaction from Natasha. She'd only ever seen him while he was under Loki's control and from whatever footage of him in battle that S.H.I.E.L.D. had, she had no idea what to make of him as a person.

"You have to narrow your field, how many spectrometers do you have access to?"

"How many are there?"

"Call every lab you know, tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm based on cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places. Do you have somewhere for me to work?" And just like that with a mention of his work Banner completely chilled out, taking off his coat and rolling up his sleeves, now completely at ease.

"Agent Romanoff, would you show Dr Banner to his laboratory please?"

With a sharp nod Natasha led Bruce off the bridge and Willow stood there awkwardly, now completely lost. The only people she knew on the ship were now busy and she wasn't. She was just contemplating calling Jane when Steve Rogers came up to her, Coulson in tow.

"Ma'am?"

"Oh hello, I'm sorry I didn't introduce myself earlier, kind of spazzed." She offered him a small smile which he returned.

"I'm Steve Rogers."

"I'm Willow. I've read your file actually but that's not exactly the same is it?"

"No it's not."

The two sat down at the table watching everyone rush around. Agents were busy on the face trace and even Coulson had been called away to help Fury with something much to his consternation. Willow knew about the trading cards he kept in his locker and assumed that Phil had wanted to get them signed. It was adorable to see the usually stern unflappable Agent Coulson turn into a fanboy.

"So how's everything going with you? I'm sure waking up after seventy years must be quite a thing to adjust to." She said sympathetically.

"It's…difficult."

"Change usually is."

"Seventy years of change in a matter of seconds. My mind is still working in war mode."

"That's a problem for a lot of people in the army actually. Making the transition to civilian life. But hey at least you have all this familiar stuff."

"You think this is familiar?" He stated with a smirk.

"Well the technology isn't but the basic still are. Spies, lies, networks of people and big honking guns. That never changes."

"The one thing you can count on, war." Captain Rogers said sarcastically.

"What was it like, growing up in the twenties and thirties? I mean I've read about the war and all that but I don't know what it must have been like before that, to be a child in that time you know?"

It was all the encouragement he needed and Steve Rogers turned back into just plain Steve after a very long time. He began telling her everything, from his first memory to the moment his mother died and then about finding Bucky who for all intent and purpose became his saviour. They conversed for hours on end before Coulson came up to them.

"Did Jane Foster reply?"

"Oh, oh shoot I was supposed to call her!" Willow suddenly remembered and turned to Steve who looked disappointed. "I'm so sorry, we'll continue this later, and I want to hear everything." She waved before returning to the workstation that had been assigned to her before and called Jane.

"Hi Jane, I'm sorry it took me so long, I got caught up and-"

_"No no it's fine but I really can't tell you what you need to know. Erik hadn't really gone far enough in his calculations for me to know the next step."_

"What about something tentative that he would need at some point in the future though point? Think, stabilising agent, catalyst, I don't know what you would need but some things can be categorised like that right? Think in connection to gamma rays. Something that's rare."

Jane thought it over carefully_."If I had to guess then maybe iridium? It's more stable than anything else you might use when under the shock waves induced by the temperature rise due to an incident beam."_

"Okay, I didn't understand that but how many people would have access to it?"

_"S.H.I.E.L.D. would really know better-"_

"Oh okay then, it was nice talking to you, thanks for all the help."

_"Uh yeah, sure. Anytime."_ Jane said awkwardly before cutting the call and Willow stood up and rushed to Fury's side.

"I need to know where I can find iridium."

"Why?" Fury drawled out.

"Dr Foster said it might be something that they'll need so we need to find all the people who have access to it and move them to a secure facility, Loki's probably going to go after them."

Fury pointed at one agent. "You, find me the name and location of the closest person with access to iridium."

The agent began clicking away on his keyboard and within what felt like seconds he had the results. "There's a Heinrich Schaffer, nuclear scientist at the Schaffer institute in Stuttgart who migh-"

He was cut off when yet another agent raised an alarm on the face trace. "Got a hit. A 67 percent match." And suddenly all the attention went to him. "Wait cross match 79 percent."

Coulson walked forward. "Location?"

"Stuttgart Germany, 28 Konigstrasse. He's not exactly hiding."

Fury drew up the results on his own screen, he took one look at it and turned it to Willow.

"Captain you're up." Fury said and Steve went off to get ready while Coulson all but twirled in anticipation of seeing Captain America in uniform. Fury turned to her. "Willow-"

"Not right now, I'm thinking of what dress I should wear." She dismissed him and his nostrils flared in anger.

"Will-"

He was cut off again as smoke swirled at her feet. Agent 1 and 2 who were both working the bridge by now turned to watch the show expecting her to be gone when the smoke cleared but she was still there, albeit dressed in a black evening gown and high heels.

"If you'll excuse me, I have a gala to attend." With those words and a smile she disappeared with a cracking sound and Fury let off a volley of swears.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but Willow.**

**A/N: The characters list will be changed with each chapter depending upon which ones are the most involved in each one.**

* * *

_Green is for chlorophyll_

_by Arasinyah_

_Chapter 4  
_

Loki smoothed a hand down the scarf's silken surface, mentally uncomfortable without his armour and yet quite comfortable at the same time now that its weight was temporarily gone. Shifting the disguised sceptre from one hand to the other he looked out over the banister searching for his victim. He spotted the man in the crowd, a smirk taking over his face. Finally his plans could be put into motion and the chitauri would take this world by storm.

Within seconds he bounded down the stairs. He could smell his victory in the air, along with another sweet scent, one that reminded him of his mother.

Frigga, he corrected himself pausing in his walk towards destiny, not mother. He shook his head at the wayward thought, confused at how clear his mind had felt with that thought. The Tesseract provided clarity, it provided answers so why did his mind feel so clouded all of a sudden?

He began to resume his course when a mortal woman bumped into him spilling her drink on his suit.

"Oops, I'm so sorry, I'm not usually this clumsy!" She said with a lilting voice, like she had laughter hidden in it and he was suddenly very aware of the pressure in the back of his head.

"That's quite alright." He said instead of smiting her like he should have, the pressure moving to the back of his eyes and becoming more painful by the second. Images of the chitauri grinning down at him while the weight of a metal whip dug into his back filled his mind and he stumbled.

"No really, I'll help you clear this up." He heard her say and with a shuddering breath he closed his eyes, the lights now hurting his eyes with their intensity. "You don't look so good."

She was steering him away from his victim, and he did not even care to stop her. Loki felt weakened for some reason, unable to keep his eyes open even though he had been through worse, much worse at the hands of Thanos' right hand man.

He clutched his head at the insurgence of memories, of being held captive as they tried to break his mind and body. Why was he trying to help them? They had done him no less harm than Odin so why was he not taking his revenge on them as well? Why was he letting them use him like that?

The pain was growing, moving from his head to the rest of him and his muscles clenched at the ache. He staggered and was wholly dependent on her to keep him from falling, leaning his weight entirely on her as his feet gave way under the pain.

She led him away, an arm curled around his waist as if holding him in a hug and his knees buckled once again at the warmth she emanated. She cooed soothing words into his hair, "Shh, shh, it'll be okay", were the last words he heard before darkness took over his mind.

Willow folded under his weight when he lost consciousness and fell upon her. Luckily she had managed to manoeuvre them into an alcove behind a pillar so no one in the party could see them which was excellent because the minute he had lost consciousness the suit had morphed back into heavy armour and the glowing cane turned into a sceptre.

She took out the cell phone from her pocket and called a S.H.I.E.L.D. number and was soon redirected to Natasha's communicator.

"Natasha, I've got Loki, he's unconscious and I can't really move him, could you please send someone to help me?"

"On it."

She dragged him further into the shadows as a pair of dancers came too close and sat there waiting. Eventually the music died down and the man of the hour, Heinrich Schaffer, began to make a long speech in German. Ignoring the discourse going on as he thanked investors and gave a nice little speech punctuated with laughter at all the right moments, she looked at the man in her lap.

From the stories Huginn and Muninn had told her she had expected someone a great deal different especially when compounded by the frankly terrifying things she had seen him do in the video of his arrival. At least now the bruises under his eyes were fading, he had been physically weak yet didn't seem too injured but now that she was there next to him, now that she had felt what he was feeling she wondered how he was standing at all.

His mind was so clouded she wasn't sure if he realised anything he had done, if he was aware of what was happening. That sceptre in his hand was giving out an odd vibe, amplifying all negative emotions so that even now as he lay there dead to the world she could feel his agitation growing. His eyes flicked under his eyelids, distressed and she ran a hand over his forehead in hopes that it would calm him down and as it worked she realised how young he looked.

She needed to get him away from that sceptre, as far away as possible but wasn't really brave enough to take it herself. It fed on anger and even though she hadn't been angry in a very long time she still feared the feeling.

Just as he began to calm down and stopped shaking, a loud noise was heard. The people at the gala were panicking and many of them began moving outside. There was a sense of pandemonium in the air and Willow shrunk into herself as the sceptre fed on the chaos, glowing brighter.

"Natasha?" She dialled a number hoping to catch the Black Widow and see where they were on the back up but even as she did Steve came striding in, in full Captain America regalia.

"Need some help with that Ma'am?" Steve asked politely even as a crooked grin played on his lips and she smiled back at him.

"Yes please, he's surprisingly heavy."

They both shouldered the weight of the God and carried him out. As soon as they stepped out many eyes fell upon them, the guests of the gala still milling about outside the venue, glossing over Willow to look carefully at the superhero and man in odd armour instead. One of the guests got out a camera and took a picture of them and even as Willow went to stop him the flash went off, awakening the previously unconscious God.

Loki, now awake and angry, pointed the sceptre at Steve and blew him away, the blow coming at such close quarters with such force that even Captain America went flying, landing on a building roof a whole block away.

Willow teleported away before Loki could even turn to her and reappeared on the roof where Steve lay coughing up dust and pushing away the debris of the parapet he had punched through.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, just a bit banged up." He stood up quickly brushing the dust off his uniform.

The sound of screams rang through the air and sirens blared for a full three seconds before stopping abruptly. the two raced to the edge of the roof to see what was happening. From where they stood they could see clones of Loki rounding people up and even though they couldn't' hear what he was saying, they knew it couldn't be much good as the entire crowd knelt in front of him.

"I need to stop him." Steve said and leapt down the length of the building landing easily on his feet before sprinting off to the square where Loki and the crowd was. He got there just in time to save an old men from feeling the force of the sceptre with his shield.

As he walked up to Loki the people in the crowd began standing up as well, gaining confidence now that he was there to set an example. Willow stayed where she was, dithering. She didn't know what part she could play now, she wasn't and never would be a fighter and this was most definitely a fight.

A quinjet commandeered by Natasha swooped down onto the city skyline and the Agent's voice rang out over the speakers.

"Loki, drop the weapon and stand down."

He fired a shot at the quinjet with his sceptre but it nimbly avoided it, swerving to the side and the fight turned to fisticuffs as Steve and Loki engaged each other in battle, sceptre and shield meeting in loud clangs that Willow heard all the way up on the roof but the fight turned one sided as Loki left Steve devoid of his shield in one simple move and Steve was soon being thrown around by Loki with ease.

A song that Willow vaguely identified as something by AC/DC began blaring over the PA system of the quinjet, distracting the two players in the fight and a blast of a repulsor beam threw Loki into the steps behind him before Iron man swooped down in a graceful arc, landing on the cobbled path dramatically.

From where she was watching Willow clapped at the display. Tony Stark would make a good magician considering his wonderful sense of flair, she thought to herself now calm in the knowledge that these two together could probably handle Loki.

The quinjet landed on the ground and before long Willow, Iron Man, Captain America and Loki were on it as it made its way to the helicarrier. Willow sat on one of the seats across form Loki who was doing his damndest to avoid her eyes and Stark and Steve conversed a bit away from them. She couldn't quite make out what they were saying as they whispered but it seemed to be personal and so she kept her distance. A sudden bout of thunder broke them from their conversation and Loki looked up with something that seemed an awful lot like fear.

"What's the matter, scared of lightning?" Steve said and Loki's face relaxed into a more blank expression.

"I'm not overly fond of what follows." He drawled.

The quinjet jolted as a heavy weight seemed to settle itself on onto its roof and both the heroes got into their battle ready positions, Steve putting on the cowl and grabbing his shield while Stark put on his helmet.

Tony strode ahead, pressing a button on the board at the side and the ramp opened up. A tall blonde man that Willow recognised as Thor from the files she had read settled onto it heavily rocking the quinjet further. Tony stepped forward to stop him but was hit with a hammer instead and before he could recover, Thor grabbed Loki by the neck and swinging his hammer around like a flail he jumped out into the sky.

_"And now there's that guy."_ Tony said in his digitalised voice as Natasha and her co-pilot struggled with the quinjet.

"Another Asgardian?!" Natasha said, shouting to be heard over the sound of the wind and Willow nodded.

"He's Thor." She said for everyone's benefit.

"That guy's a friendly?" Steve asked but before Willow could affirm this Tony spoke up.

_"Doesn't matter, if he frees Loki or kills him the Tesseract's lost."_

"Stark we need a plan of attack." Steve said, cautious.

_"I have a plan. Attack."_

Stark took off behind Thor and Steve unstrapped a parachute bag and began pulling it up his torso.

"I'd sit this one out, Cap" Natasha said, turning back to the control panel to flick a couple of switches.

"I don't see how I can."

"These guys come from legends, they're basically gods."

"There's only one God, ma'am and I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that." Securing the shield on his arm he took a flying leap off the ramp and only three were left on the jet.

Willow sighed. "Should I follow them?" She asked Natasha who had now managed to get the jet to stabilise. The ramp closed up and slowly but surely the alarms stopped flashing.

"Keep an eye on Loki." Natasha said and taking it as an affirmative Willow disappeared again with a crack, reappearing on the cliff side where Loki sat easily, watching the fight below.

Loki watched as Thor summoned lightning and laughed. It was surprising to think that Agent Barton found them to be threats. All he had to do was wait and they would end up killing each other without any interference from him.

The voice he had heard before he lost consciousness broke him out of his thoughts. "Enjoying the show?" It was rare for people to sneak up on him, even rarer for them to do so when only seconds prior they'd been in a flying contraption. The chit wasn't even looking at him instead keeping her eyes trained on the fight unfolding on the ground below them. She sat down on a rock next to him trying to keep her full skirts from touching the dirt. "It's a beautiful night." She smiled and took a deep, content breath looking up at the sky for a moment before her eyes returned to the fight.

He tried hard to control his fast breaths as he watched her, angry. She had managed to do something that many other had failed to; she had gotten inside his mind and done so easily. It was only curiosity as to what magic she had used that kept him from breaking her in two. For a mere mortal to wield control over a former king of Asgard was intriguing albeit humiliating.

A cawing sound took his attention away from her and his father's ravens swooped down upon them, settling down on either side of the girl.

"A new favourite? Huginn, Muninn, I'm hurt. Did you replace me that easily?" He drawled.

"Yes." The trio watching the fight downstairs chorused.

"Well isn't that rude."

"I'd say it's not that rude, at least we didn't use a sceptre and try to take over your mind. Off the top of my head that seems much worse."

"So you didn't go poking about in my mind?" He said sarcastically.

"No, I just tried to calm you, how your mind interpreted those actions is entirely on you."

She crossed her ankles daintily and looked over the precipice while he in turn watched her. She had somehow gotten into his mind, made him question things and feel a surge of conflicting emotions that drove him mad and he was not happy about it. The sceptre could not even control him, why then did this child have so much power over him?

The fight continued in the forest and the groaning sounds of trees bending and breaking reached them on their perch.

"It's alright, I'll watch from here." She said and he looked at her like she was crazy.

"I didn't say anything." Loki said and grew more confused when she just giggled at him.

"I'm not talking to _you_!" She said softly and went back to holding what appeared to be a conversation with the wind. "It's fine, I don't want to trouble you."

"Who is she talking to?" Loki asked Huginn as he swept lower.

"The trees." Muninn answered for his twin.

"If you're sure." She said into the air before stepping off the cliff as if simply climbing down a staircase and with a sharp intake of breath Loki moved from his spot, expecting to see her plastered all over the ground. Instead the trees bent towards her lovingly, the rustle of their leaves mixing with her laughter to reach his ears. He watched the tree sway, bending over its middle and depositing her on the ground before standing upright again.

He had seen his mo- Frigga command the plants on many occasions but this was different. This girl did not ask anything of them and yet they gave it freely, that they would nearly break themselves in two just to afford her a better view was unheard of.

Even stranger then that Barton knew nothing about her. What he knew came from the files S.H.I.E.L.D. kept on her and the files appeared to be very sparse. Barton hadn't even considered her a threat and yet here she was, knocking Loki unconscious, talking to the trees and being vouched for by Huginn and Muninn.

He'd have keep an eye on her once he figured out how to be around her without reliving painful memories and questioning his own actions. Hopefully it wouldn't take too long.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: I'll admit there's relatively little original story in there, most of this is a transcript of the Avengers script which feels a bit (a lot) like cheating. However I get to watch Avengers over and over again to write this and I adore that part of the process a great deal. I know there's questions about the romance factor in this but that depends on whether I can write it. Historically it has been proven that I _suck_ at romance, however subtext will probably be in abundance. I don't believe I've thanked you all for your lovely reviews, so thank you for the feedback, it does spur me on to update. **

******Disclaimer: I own nothing but Willow.**

* * *

_Green is for chlorophyll_

_by Arasinyah_

_Chapter 5  
_

When they landed on the floating battleship and Loki had been separated from the rest and given his own armed escort he had almost sagged in an obvious sign of relief. Being so close to that Willow female, as the Black Widow had called her, made him feel oddly tender. His hands tied behind his back he walked calmly between two long rows of armed men, smiling gleefully when he passed Bruce Banner, the monster.

He was led into a glass chamber and left in there with his bonds freed. The Midgardians, he soon realised, really had no idea what he was capable of. Still it wasn't like their handcuffs would have held him anyway, the very bullets that they used had failed to pierce his skin and they thought those little steel shackles would hold him.

Before he could inspect his abode in the detail he wanted to however, the man with an eye patch walked into the room, Nick Fury Barton had called him.

It was instinctual for Loki to trouble men like him. He was like Heimdall and Odin combined, the eye patch and the authoritative disdain, it did something to Loki's trickster impulses, excited them to no end and brought out the imp in him.

"In case it's unclear", Fury walked up to the control panel by the cell, "You try to escape, you so much as scratch that glass-"

He pressed a button and a hatch opened up under the glass cell that Loki was in. Loki moved forward but rolled his eyes. The sounds of the wind were hardly scary for someone who'd spent millennia with Thor, God of Thunder, as brother and the glass cell didn't afford him a view of the empty space he presumes had opened up under him.

"Thirty thousand feet, straight down in a steel trap, you get how that works?" He pushed another button and the hatch closed. "Ant," He gestured to Loki before turning to the button as if to say 'Have you met my friend here?' and continued. "Boot."

Loki laughed a low chuckle and backed away from the edge of the cage. He suspected that he knew more about the cage than Nick Fury did, his own scientific mind understand the workings of the hydraulic locks better than most people on the ship did.

"It's an impressive cage," He lied, laughter in his voice, "Not built I think, for me."

From where the others were sitting at the conference table and watching Willow leaned forward zooming in on Loki. "He has a nice voice." She made the observation casually ignoring the looks the other shot her.

"Built for something a lot stronger than you." The second Fury said that, Natasha tensed.

"Oh I've heard," Loki turned to the camera to his left and looked straight at it. "The mindless beast, makes play he's still a man. How desperate are you, that you call upon such lost creatures to defend you." Natasha turned slowly to Bruce who simply looked amused and Willow clucked her tongue.

"Reason why I intensely dislike S.H.I.E.L.D. number 246, huzzah, we're getting close to the big 250." Natasha shot her a grateful look. She might not realise it but her playful comments might be just the thing to keep Bruce from Hulk-ing out on them.

"How desperate am I? You threaten my world with war. You steal a force you can't hope to control. You talk about peace and you kill for fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."

"War, using the tesseract and killing are his offenses? Because that doesn't sound like something S.H.I.E.L.D. does on a regular basis at all." This time Natasha was not so happy for Willow's sarcastic commentary even if it did earn her a fist bump from Bruce that left Steve feeling a bit left out.

Loki let out a cool breath and Fury got more agitated. "It burns you to have come so close, to have the tesseract, to have power_, unlimited power_. And for what?" Loki turned to the camera and smiled as if he knew something they didn't and given Barton's level of clearance that wouldn't surprise anyone though. "A warm light for all mankind to share. And then to be reminded what real power is."

Fury began to walk away and even though he did so with a smirk everyone knew that it was because he couldn't really bear to stay there anymore. "Well, you let me know if 'real power' wants a magazine or something."

Loki walked towards the camera and just as Willow expected him to waggle his fingers at them teasingly the video was cut.

"He really grows on you doesn't he?" Banner said his hands folded casually and Natasha tensed. Last time he had made jokes he had also terrified the shit out of her.

"So does bacteria." Willow said in a matter of fact manner and Steve hid a smile trying to get back into his serious Captain America mode.

"Loki's gonna drag this out. So, Thor, what's his play?"

Thor had been morose ever since Loki had started talking and even now he couldn't quite bear to look at his brother. He had spent the entire time listening to his brother but unable to face him.

"He has an army called the Chitauri. They're not of Asgard or any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the earth in return, I suspect, for the tesseract."

The incredulous look on Steve's face had Willow stifling laughter.

"An army," He turned to the others as if hoping for someone to say 'April Fool's!' but they remained silent. "...From outer space."

"So he's building another portal. That's what he needs Erik Selvig for." Bruce paced.

"Selvig?" Thor said a look of recognition on his face.

"He's an astrophysicist." Bruce informed the God whose face turned troubled.

"He's a friend."

"Loki has him under some kind of spell," Natasha leaned forward, a slight frown on her face."Along with one of ours." Willow filed that bit of information away, it was the most emotion that she had ever seen on Natasha that was genuine.

"I want to know why Loki let us take him. He's not leading an army form here."

"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you could smell crazy on him." Willow lowered her face to hide her smile. Bruce had no idea how true that was.

"Have care how you speak," Thor stood a bit taller and took a menacing step forward that didn't faze Banner in the slightest. "Loki is beyond reason but he is of Asgard. And he is my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days." Natasha glared at him and his eye twitched.

"He is adopted."

"You know that's still a much lower kill rate than SHIELD, I mean on an average you guys kill, what, around one hundred people a day right? Give or take a few prisoners who're tortured." Willow said laughingly but it was a brittle laugh.

When no agent present there refuted that claim the conversation shifted back to Loki, the table now uneasy.

"I think it's about the mechanics." Bruce speculated and Willow applauded him for ignoring the opportunity to prod at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s tactics even thought she could feel his agitation. 'Iridium, what does he need the iridium for?"

"It's a stabilising agent." Tony said, walking in with Phil and saying something quietly to him. Coulson nodded and smiled before walking away and Tony turned back to the room. "It means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D."

Willow could see Agents at their workstations suddenly craning their necks discreetly to get a look at Iron Man and smiled.

"No hard feelings Point Break, you've got a mean swing," He patted Thor's bicep causally, "Also it means the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Loki wants."

Maria looked away from him, barely controlled annoyance as he walked up to the viewing deck and looked over the crew.

"Uh raise the mizzenmast, jib the topsails." The crew turned to him in disbelief. "That man is playing galaga!" He pointed to a crew member on his right. "Thought we wouldn't notice but we did. How does Fury even see these?"

A valid question really, Willow herself had always wondered if it had taken Fury some time to get used to shooting with his depth perception off-kilter since the loss of one of his eyes.

"He turns." Maria said dryly.

"Sounds exhausting." Tony turned and made himself at home with the screens pulling up data and videos on some while running searches on others. "The rest of the raw materials Agent Barton get his hands on pretty easily. The only major component he still needs is a power source of high energy density. Something to kick-start the cube."

"When did you become an expert on thermonuclear astrophysics?"

"Last night." They looked him with disbelief. "The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extractions theory papers, am I the only one who did the reading? And how did they get the iridium anyway, didn't we put a stop to his nefarious plot to pluck out that guy's eye?"

"He had others that were there on scene with him, while you made your dynamic entry they kidnapped him. Heinrich Schaffer was found a few feet away from the open door leading to the iridium storage facility." Agent Hill said.

"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve asked, lost with all the science talk.

"He'd have to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier." Bruce paced the room.

"Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilise the quantum tunnelling effect." Tony walked up to him, glad to have found a kindred soul.

"Well if he could do that he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet."

"Finally, someone who speaks English."

Willow rolled her eyes and slashed a hand over her head as if to say 'All of this is going right over my head' and Steve concurred. "Is that what just happened?"

"It's good to meet you Dr Banner." Tony shook hands with Bruce. "Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled and I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

Willow snorted loudly into her hand unable to control her laughter anymore and Tony's eyes strayed to her for a second before turning back to Bruce.

"Thanks."

Fury walked in as always dramatically.

"Dr Banner is only here to track the cube. I was hoping you might join him."

"Let's start with that stick of his. It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon." Steve added his two cents.

"I don't know about that, but it is powered by the cube. And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

"Monkeys? I do not understand." Thor said and Steve pointed, ecstatic.

"I do! I understood that reference." Willow smiled at him indulgently, his glee at understanding a reference infectious.

Stark obviously didn't think so as he rolled his eyes obviously but turned to the picture of Loki that was pulled up by Willow.

"He reminds me of someone." Tony frowned, trying to place his thoughts.

Willow thought it over and a certain character came to mind.

"Lord Farquaad?"

"What?"

No one at the table really got the reference. She supposed that scientists on the run didn't have much time to peruse animated movies nor did spies or Norse Gods. The frozen Captain America and Fury definitely didn't but she swore Maria's eyes twitched in recognition and made a mental note to find out.

"Yes, exactly! The short guy from Shrek! Didn't he say something like that?" Tony asked and Willow nodded.

"I'm not the monster here, you are. You and the rest of that fairytale trash poisoning my perfect world." She quoted and everyone swivelled in their chairs to look at her. "I...spend a lot of time with children, Shrek is a classic." She shrugged.

"Loki…he did think of the Jotunn as monsters that did not deserve to live. This Lord Farquaad, he was defeated in battle I hope?" Thor mused.

"….He's a fictional character. But he was defeated in the movies when a dragon ate him."

"I would rather my brother not be eaten."

"I would rather not deal with a dragon at all so we're in accordance there." Willow said and Tony grinned at her.

"I like you, now come on, you can help both of us."

"I'm not a scientist."

"You'll be fine, plus Fury probably wants to make sure someone's keeping an eye on me and Brucie." Bruce jolted at the sudden familiarity Tony was employing.

Fury rolled his eyes. "Go."

With an apologetic grin to Steve she left with the two scientists.

The sceptre had been placed on a holder in the lab by the time they got there and Bruce went to it first. He ran what Willow presumed to be a scanner over it.

"The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the tesseract but it's going to take weeks to process."

"If we bypass their mainframe and direct route to the Homer Cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops"

Bruce laughed and Willow watched from a corner of the room in fascination as the two got into their element.

"All I packed was a toothbrush."

Tony walked up to him with a smile."You know you should come by Stark Tower sometime, top ten floors all R&D. You'd love it, it's candy land."

"Thanks but the last time I was in New York I kinda broke…Harlem"

"Well I promise a stress free environment. No tension, no surprises." Just as he said those words Tony jabbed him with a little electrical prod and Bruce yelped.

Steve, who had decided to come by the lab instead of just sitting at the table watching Thor come to terms with the fact that his brother was a megalomaniac, shouted out in protest.

"Hey!"

"Nothing?" Tony continued, ignoring Steve completely. Willow swivelled on her chair and watched the sceptre carefully. Last time she had been this close to it Loki was twitching in anger and pain, she wondered what it was doing to them all now. It certainly wasn't staying dormant, she knew that but it wasn't reacting quite the way it did with Loki.

"Hey, are you nuts?" Steve asked, angry.

"Jury's still out." The seriousness with which Tony said that made Bruce snort."You really have got a lid on it don't you? What's your secret, mellow jazz, bongo drums, huge bag of weed?"

"Is everything a joke to you?"

Tony pointed the prod at Steve."Funny things are."

"Threatening the safety of everyone on the ship isn't funny." Steve turned to Bruce as if he'd just realised that that might have offended him. "No offense doc."

"No it's alright, I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy objects."

Tony just took the words in his stride, waltzing about the lab with ease. Willow sat in the corner forgotten for the moment.

"You're tiptoeing big man, you need to strut."

"And you need to focus on the problem Mr Stark."

"You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What is Willow doing here, and in what way is she advising S.H.I.E.L.D. at the moment? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."

Willow shrunk as all eyes fell to her momentarily.

"You think Fury's hiding something?" Steve asked and for once in her life Willow was thankful for Nick Fury's existence.

"He's a spy, captain, he's _the_ spy. His secrets have secrets." He pointed to Bruce. "It's bugging him too, isn't it?"

"Uh I just want to finish my work here and-" Bruce dithered but Steve wasn't having any of it.

"Doctor?"

"'A warm light for all mankind', Loki's jab at Fury about the cube."

"I heard it."

"Well I think it was meant for you," He pointed at Tony who offered him a blueberry. "Even if Barton didn't tell Loki all about the Tower it was still all over the news."

"Stark tower? That big, ugly-" Steve stopped as Tony shot him a look before continuing anyway, "building in New York?"

Apparently Tony was the only one Steve didn't care about offending.

"It's powered by an arc reactor, a self sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for, what, a year?"

"It's just the prototype." Tony shrugged. " I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now. That's what he's getting at" He clarified for Steve.

"So why didn't S.H.I.E.L.D. bring him in on the Tesseract project? What are they doing in the energy business in the first place?"

"I should probably look into that once my decryption program finishes breaking into all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secure files."

Steve got up in Tony's face in utter disbelief."I'm sorry did you just say-"

"JARVIS has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours I'll know every dirty secret S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever tried to hide. Blueberry?"

"Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around?"

"An intelligence organisation that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome."

"I think Loki's trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war and if we don't stay focused he'll succeed."

"He doesn't have to do any of this to start a war." Willow spoke for the first time since they entered the lab, her voice calming them all down. "The fact is that there is always a war going on somewhere on Earth, he could easily just capitalise on some protest, some rebellion going on somewhere and twist it to his advantage. He doesn't need to do any of this at all. When S.H.I.E..L.D. lost him he could have just gone underground, with Barton there he had the resources to do so. He's excellent at strategy, he could take over the world in any way he wanted but he wanted to do it as himself."

"You've lost me."

"Well his plan of world domination, wow can't believe I said that and it wasn't a hyperbole, is about himself. Not about power, not about Earth even, it's all about him. His mind is beyond a bag of cats honestly. To stop him we do need to think of the Tesseract first, but we need to think of it from his perspective. This perspective is what we lack so all we can do is run a search program."

"So all we can do right now is follow orders." Steve said and Tony shrugged.

"Following's really not my style."

"And you're all about style aren't you?"

"Of the people in the room, which one is a) wearing a spangly outfit and b) not of use?"

Before they could get into a fight Bruce's voice broke the two apart. "Steve, tell me none of this sounds funky to you?"

He looked between the two. "Just find the cube." With one last look at Willow who looked incredibly apologetic he walked out.

"Poor guy."Willow clucked. "He's so lost."

"Lost?"

"He woke up in a time that's about eight decades years after his. He was frozen while preventing a loss of lives by a weapon during a war. He wakes up but the world is still at war, still fighting and lives are still being lost and it feels like he did it all for nothing. All his friends are dead or have moved on and lived a life that he should have and the son of his good friend Howard, that he thought would maybe be able to tell him about what a great life Howard lived instead hates his guts."

Tony was stunned into silence.

"You think this is about my Dad?"

"This is about what your Dad represents. His old life. And you just shat all over it, pardon my French."

Tony looked between her and the door thoughtfully before settling on her. "I've been wondering about you. There wasn't a lot about you in the files." Tony said popping a blueberry into his mouth. "No videos of you in fights, no birth date, no mention of parents, only one of your grandmother and even your mission qualifications are blank. They just labelled you as a sorceress and that's it. I find it hard to believe they don't have any information on you."

"Well I don't really fight which limits how useful I am to S.H.I.E.L.D. All of our encounters have most been of a rescue mission type and those things don't get you a mention in files." She tilted her head and mulled it over. "You'll probably hear some stories from the agents if you stay here long. Most of them grossly exaggerated but some of them aren't."

"Which ones aren't?"

She grinned. "That's for me to know and you to figure out. Oh and Nicholas gave me access to all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files if that helps with your decryption program." She turned over a card to him. Tony's eyebrows flew into his hair at the level of clearance on it and he whistled.

"Thanks, this does help actually."He looked at her suspiciously."Why are you giving this to me?"

"I don't like Fury."

"What did he ever do to you?" He said sarcastically but clearly meant it as well as he sat down in front of her in expectation of an answer.

"Tried to recruit me for S.H.I.E.L.D."

"And?"

"It was not nice, the way he did it. You see I have an aversion to killing in general. By that I mean bugs and all other such animals even."

"So?"

"So I couldn't kill anything or really even hurt it and that made me useless to S.H.I.E.L.D. They can't keep me in captivity and experiment on me because I can just teleport my way out of anything. So they created a tense situation and tested my abilities by putting me in a situation where I would absolutely _have_ to kill. Natasha was pretending to be a friend for some time then. They made it look like she was kidnapped and strung me along. The fact that she was in on it did not make me any happier. " Willow blinked furiously and her nose twitched. "I almost killed myself trying to save her because I couldn't exactly kill anyone else. And then I find out it was a 'test' and I failed." She laughed but it was a sad laugh.

"That's terrible." Bruce sympathised.

"Well the more I learn about S.H.I.E.L.D. the more it feels like they went easy on me which is a hard pill to swallow."

"Yeah S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't get my vote either so the good Captain's 'We should follow orders' deal doesn't exactly work for me."

"He's not wrong though, Loki does have the jump on us." Bruce said.

"What he has is an Acme dynamite kit, it's going to blow up in his face and I'm going to be there when it does."

"And I'll read all about it." Bruce smiled.

"Or you'll be suiting up with the rest of us."

"You see, I don't have suit of armour. I'm exposed like a nerve." All hint of amusement on Bruce's face died. "It's a nightmare."

"You know, I've got a cluster of shrapnel trying every second to crawl its way into my heart. This stops it". Tony patted on his chest and a blue glow reached through his shirt as he moved to Bruce. "This little circle of light, it's part of me now. Not just armour. It's a…terrible privilege."

"But you can control it."

"Because I learned how."

"And because he accepted it as a part of his life."

Bruce looked in between the two before dropping his gaze and focusing on the screen in front of him intensely. "That's different."

"You're not Jekyll to his Hyde, Bruce. The Other Guy, as you call him, is a self preservative instinct. Just a stronger one. Violence is in our nature, we are predators by temperament." Willow added.

"And yet _you_ find yourself unable to hunt."

"…The lack of self preservative instinct is strong in me. Frankly the only reason I still exist is because when I get angry I do _nothing_ about it but then others find out and they do _a lot_ about it." Willow looked off into space. "And I can't stop them really because it isn't exactly unwarranted."

"You're telling me it's okay to break New York City?"

"I'm saying that you fight for a reason and you fight against something, something that opposes you and provoked you in the first place. If not, you would be the Hulk at all times and Brue Banner only at some."

Tony agitatedly swiped his hand on the screen and slid the data aside so Bruce would have to look at him. "Hey I've read all about your accident, that much gamma exposure should have killed you."

"So you're saying the Hulk…the Other Guy saved my life? That's nice. It's a nice sentiment. Saved it for what?"

"I guess we'll find out."

"You might not like that."

"You just might."


	6. Chapter 6

******Disclaimer: I own nothing but Willow.**

* * *

_Green is for chlorophyll_

_by Arasinyah_

_Chapter 6  
_

"Well that's all set." Tony said and with a sigh stretched his arms over his head cracking his back. "The model's set and sweeping for the Tesseract's signature, now all we have to do is wait."

"And the hacking into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secret files thing?"

"Almost done, JARVIS is checking to see which files are relevant."

Willow made an odd sound, like a kitten and sagged in her chair leaning her chin on the desk. "I didn't even do anything, why am I so tired?!"

"That's not true you did that fantastic Fury impression, had us in stitches."

"You should catch some sleep it'll probably be a few hours before we get a hit." Bruce said kindly.

"But I am a creature of the Earth, the Sky and the Oceans, sleeping in a metal cage makes my skin crawl."

"Who invited Luna Lovegood?" Tony said jabbing a thumb in her direction and Willow and Bruce smiled.

"I'll go look for Steve, he seemed a bit off."

"Don't get lost."

"I'll just look for Coulson's drool trail." She said quietly to herself and flounced off, hoping no one else heard it. If Tony's laughter was anything to go by she had no such luck.

She passed a few curious sights on the way around the ship, Natasha and Fury discussing something near the passage leading to Loki's cage, Coulson and Thor talking away with Steve nowhere in sight and Agent Hill talking into her communicator looking pointedly away from her. It was like watching high school cliques graduate to college and having no clue where they now stood with one another.

Willow walked around the ship asking a few wandering agents where they'd last seen Steve and they answered her while shaking in their boots. She supposed the stories about her had gotten out of control now but apparently her smiling at them and practically skipping away didn't do anything to lessen their fear, if anything it increased it. She followed the instructions but soon found herself in the lower levels of the ship where not a soul was to be found.

Eventually she did find Steve though, he was attempting to push open a very heavy steel door and she stood behind him for a few seconds, wondering what to do.

"Hi." She whispered and Steve jumped two feet in the air. He clutched a hand to his heart and panted.

"Jeez, don't do that, you gave me a heart attack!"

"What are you trying to do?"

"Trying to find S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secrets." Her mouth dropped in surprise and he blushed. "I know it's not righ-"

"Oh you won't hear me saying anything about the morality of this, I'm just surprised that _you_ would do this, it seems out of character."

Steve grimaced and stood taller while simultaneously deflating."I fell into the ocean thinking maybe the world would learn from the war I fought in and stop, instead they haven't changed a damn thing."

She laid a comforting hand on his shoulder before standing on her toes to peer through the glass window in the door. "So you need this opened right?"

"Yeah but it's not budging."

"Okay then." She disappeared from sight and reappeared on the other side of the door. With one press of a button the door slid open easily and Steve found himself looking straight at her, impressed.

"Tada!" She whispered, throwing a hand in the air.

They walked in quietly, Steve making sure to stay in front of Willow as a human shield. On the level above a glass lined passage ran against the wall and through them they saw S.H.I.E.L.D. agents walking by.

"We're probably right under the Mess hall, I know that passage. I thought this storage facility was for the rations and the cafeteria kitchens were connected to it, that's what some agents told me." Willow whispered.

"That's probably the impression S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted us to have." He grabbed her waist and jumped up in one smooth motion reaching the catwalk above them.

"I could just have teleported myself." Willow squeaked, winded.

"Sorry for manhandling you."

"It's fine, just…give me a warning next time. I'm not used to physical contact. Well physical contact from anyone over the age of twelve."

"So, you don't have any friends?" Steve made small talk while they set about opening all the crates of weaponry that were stored there.

"Not really."

"Why not?"

"Well I talk to trees and plants and animals, when adults see that they do have a tendency to call the local mental asylum to see if anyone's esca-" When she stopped mid-sentence Steve walked over to see what was wrong and froze to see weapons with the HYDRA symbol on them in the case she had just opened. "I'm not even surprised. Being right sucks sometimes."

"If you'll excuse me, I have some people to confront." Steve said a vein ticking away in his forehead in anger. Without another word he rushed out of there, a HYDRA gun in his hand, every step echoing with anger and Willow had no choice but to follow behind closely.

When she saw Natasha walking out of the chamber that held Loki's cage though, she stopped. Without a look at her Natasha fell in behind Thor who was also going in the direction of the lab and they set off right behind Steve. Willow stayed back and walked down the passage Natasha had just left to go talk to Loki.

"What happened?" She asked the trickster god and he laughed.

"Are _you_ to be the balm then?"

"…I have no idea what you're talking about but why is everyone so antsy and what was Natasha doing here?"

"The Black Widow was interrogating me." He was honest if only because she seemed to be genuinely confused. He couldn't very well screw with her mind if it was all over the place.

"Oh, _ohhh_." She nodded to him in understanding. "She did the whole emotional manipulation thing didn't she, I'm sorry."

It was his turn to be confused. "Why are you _sorry_?"

"Well between the sceptre and now Natasha your head really hasn't gotten a break has it?"

He snorted in laughter. "The sceptre has no control over me."

"Control, no, but it is screwing with you massively." She tilted her head. "Didn't you know that?"

"I am a far higher being than the humans; the mind gem has no power over me."

"Then why were you having nightmares every time it glowed?" He stiffened at her words.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Even as the petulant words left his mouth he cursed himself for returning to such base childish tactics.

"When you were unconscious at the gala-"

"You mean after you knocked me out?"

"I didn't knock you out; your mind just suddenly started fighting the sceptre once I reminded it to. You knocked yourself out."

"You're lying." He remained adamant.

"Why would I possibly lie?"

Loki opened his mouth to say something but controlled himself, relaxing and practically dancing away from the glass where she stood. "You should probably get back to your friends now. I suppose they'll try to put the monster in here with me soon."

"What monster? HYDRA's not here right?"

"Bruce Banner." He drawled the words slithering off his tongue smoothly but she relaxed.

"Oh Bruce is fine, he's a total sweetheart, he has a few anger issues but who doesn't and Bruce has really got a lid on it. He's quite calm considering- you know"

"And you think he'll still be calm when he's confronted by all of S.H.I.E.L.D. while in the presence of the sceptre?"

Her eyes widened with horror and she rushed off before doubling back. With a flick of her wrist she conjured a newspaper and her hand passed straight through the glass of the cage and she smacked him on the nose with it.

"Bad Loki!" She chastised and before he could react, slipped her hand out of the glass and ran off to the lab.

She burst through the door having practically run to get there and bent over panting.

"Guys, Loki's really happy right now," She stopped talking to control her breath fanning herself and eventually calmed down. "Like proper glee kind of happy, I think he might have _skipped_ even. I could feel it and…what are you guys doing?" She had finally noticed that everyone was looking at her but were mostly on the verge of fighting one another, all standing in a circle and practically breathing fire even though the tension had lessened somewhat with her loud entry.

"What do you mean you felt it?" Bruce asked stepping forward almost threateningly.

"Umm I'm kind of an empath, I feel stuff, feelings and things. It's how I talk to animals, the less complicated the thought process the more likely I am to...get it, I guess."

Steve and Bruce were no longer looking at her while Tony was staring at her with open hostility.

"Did you use that on us?" Steve finally said. "Did you get into our minds to see what we were feeling? Is that why you talked to us like that?"

"No, I did not. Do you think I want to know what you're thinking? Like it's a fun thing for me to be inside the head of someone who's gone through as much emotional trauma as all of you have? I haven't gotten inside your head, I don't _want_ to get inside your head." She scoffed.

"You just seem to know what we're feeling."

"Well yeah some of the empathy I can't really turn off but I wouldn't have needed that to know what you all are feeling, you wear your hearts on your sleeves and your thoughts on your faces. Even Natasha is being very obvious presumably because she's so worried about Barton."

"So you aren-"

"I'm not using any voodoo on you, I have my own feelings to deal with, I don't want to have to deal with yours too." She breathed in deeply. "I spent one minute feeling what Loki felt, just one minute and I can still feel... It was horrible, to have all this anger, resentment and hurt and fear that he didn't even realise because he was suppressing it all and the sceptre just feeding off it , amplifying all these emotions and they weren't my feelings, I didn't even know why I was -" She swallowed audibly and looked up at them. "I don't work for S.H.I.E.L.D. this isn't some trick for interrogations okay? This is just my life."

"You've been inside Loki's mind?" Thor said rather than asked.

"No I just was privy to his…consciousness, I guess that's the only way I can explain it."

"What do you mean consciousness?" Tony asked, "How's that any different than mind?"

"Uh, how do I explain the concept of consciousness vs. mind? Wait you're scientists, okay, so the mind is like the CPU and the consciousness is the desktop and I have a mouse and keypad but I'm not a computer engineer so all I can do is access files that are on the desktop."

Tony nodded in understanding."That makes sense."

"I thought it would. And while on the topic of Loki's mind, can I just say, his mind is so beyond a bag of cats it's not even funny, the sceptre was trying really hard to agitate him and if he's been around that thing for a year like Thor thinks he might then I just," She threw her palms up. "That's a _lot_ of mindfuckery. Pardon my language there's really no way to describe it, you're all probably feeling it's effects considering how it's glowing right now."

With those words the attention turned to the sceptre to find that it was indeed glowing.

"You think it's connected to our anger?" Bruce asked.

"Well yeah, it manages to control people by simply touching them, it wouldn't be much of a leap to make if we assume it stirs up people. It was agitating Loki before, I could feel it. Don't you feel it now? Don't you feel oversensitive and at the same time you just really want others to hurt like you do?" Tony rubbed his head absently and everyone stepped away from one another, Fury eyeing Bruce with apprehension. If what she said was true then getting the man who reacted to anger by turning green and destroying things out of there was prudent.

"Agent Romanoff, would you escort Dr Banner back to his-"

The slight command was all it took for Bruce to get worked up again because sceptre or no sceptre, there was a lot of anger in him. "Where? You rented my room."

Fury held up his hands trying to be placating but failed." The cell was just in case-"

"In case you needed to kill me but you can't, I know, I tried." Stunned silence met his statement. "I got low. I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out." He finally hit his stride and in that instance began speaking with a sense of self that no one had seen in him except maybe Natasha when she brought him in. "So I moved on, I focused on helping people, I was good. Until you dragged me into this freakshow and put everyone here at risk. You want to know my secret Agent Romanoff, you want to know how I stay calm?" He said menacingly and both the agents' hands went to their guns.

"Dr Banner," Steve's calm voice broke through. "Put down the sceptre."

"I told you Bruce, that thing is making us all go loco." Willow said and he stepped back rubbing his eyes and put the sceptre onto the table without a second thought.

A sudden beeping broke through the tense silence and everyone's eyes turned to the computer that would presumably hold the Tesseract's location.

"Got it." Tony said, triumphant, and calmly Bruce walked to the screen.

"Sorry kids, you don't get to see my party trick after all."

And just like that the chaos was back.

"You've located the Tesseract?" Thor asked.

"I could get there fastest." Tony said and searched his pocket for his cell phone.

"The Tesseract belongs on Asgard, no human is a match for it." Thor grew annoyed when no one paid any attention to him.

Tony made to walk out but Steve stopped him. "You're not going alone."

"You're gonna stop me?"

With the simple exchange of words, they were back to being in each other's face and Willow realised she might have underestimated their issues with one another.

"Put on the suit let's find out."

"I'm not afraid to hit an old man."

"Put on the suit."

"Oh my God." In the commotion Bruce's horrified remark went unnoticed by everyone except for Natasha and Willow, both of them moving closer to him.

"Bruce?" Willow asked. "Where's the Tesseract?"

Before he could answer an explosion rocked their section of the ship and everyone was thrown back with the impact, Natasha and Bruce falling through the glass while the rest fell to the ground. Tony and Steve left through the door while the others were still trying to get a hold of themselves. Thor was hardly hurt and made his way out of there, presumably to find Loki, while Willow and Fury oriented themselves.

"You alright?" Fury asked her and she was surprised by the genuine concern in his voice.

"Yeah, just a bit banged up." Unused to explosions she had no way of preparing for impact when she had been thrown against the door and was probably going to have some very colourful bruises all over her back later.

"Hill?!" Fury said into his communicator once he'd checked on everyone.

In that rare moment, Willow wished she had a communicator like the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. as she listened to Fury's side of the conversation which mostly consisted of mostly nothing except for giving out orders.

"Stark, you copy that?" He said before turning to her. "I need you to get to Loki, make sure he doesn't escape."

With a nod she stumbled out making her way back down to the passage she had just come out of a few minutes ago. It was taking her longer than it had before, agents swarming the corridors, panicky orders were being shouted out and then carried out. Just as she made up her mind to screw it and just teleport even with the ringing in her ears, there a loud roar rang through the helicarrier. All the agents there stopped for one brief second before getting back to work with even greater fervour and as the crowd lessened. As people went to their battle positions Willow finally managed to get to the section leading to the cage.

It was quiet, unnaturally so. The silence was punctuated only by someone's loud gasping and as she turned the corner and found herself staring at a wounded Agent 2, she ran the remaining eight feet muttering soft curses under her breath.

"Trevor, hey Trevor, are you okay? I mean you're obviously not but, can you hear me?!" She stumbled over her words, panicking at the sight in front of her.

He opened his eyes for a brief moment and she ran back out to return moments later with a first aid kit.

"Trevor stay with me." She said as she set about fundamental medical procedures, bandaging him where he was hurt and applying pressure to stop the bleeding.

"I thought you were a magician, not a doctor." She sighed in relief. If he could joke around like that he didn't have too bad a head injury and his airways were clear so she didn't have to worry about any punctured lungs despite the fractured ribs.

"I'm not, I only have a basic knowledge in treating most injuries so we need to get you to a real medic as soon as possible." Once she'd secured them she got him to stand up and helped him hobble his way out.

"There's no time, Loki-"

"Can wait, it's not like I can do much if he's already out of the cage, which, judging by your condition, he is. I'm guessing when the explosion went off and everyone ran around like headless chickens some of his lackeys came over and got him out?"

"Pretty much."

They ignored the sound of crunching metal all around them and the sudden change in slope indicating that very heavy things that should be stationary were instead sliding around. It took a while but eventually in the middle of all the chaos they found a med station.

He was barely seated when he took his earpiece off and handed it to her. "Here, it's no bloody use to me, you might as well take it."

"Are you sure?" Willow asked tentatively. A S.H.I.E.L.D. agent parting with their communicator was like someone was offering their limbs, it usually didn't happen voluntarily.

"Yes, now go take care of Loki, they were talking about a trap."

"A trap? For whom? What do I do?" She panicked. Willow wasn't the take-immediate-action type of person.

"I don't know, just go find out!"

Willow chose against running it down to the cage. While it would have been dangerous to do so with an injured person with her she would be fine if it was just her and mind made up she teleported to the cage only to find that she had miscalculated where it was due to the shift when they lost altitude and found herself in the cage instead of outside it and in the presence of quite a different god than the one she was expecting.

"Thor what are you doing here? Did you see where Loki went?" She asked only to turn to the side to find Loki right in front of her at the control panel for the cage, a bloody Phil on the ground next to him. Only then did she notice that the hatch under the cage was open and when a sickening grin spread over Loki's face she realised what he was going to do.

"Ah cra-"

She was plummeting to the ground before she could even finish the thought.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:This one was a fair bit difficult to write.**

******Disclaimer: I own nothing but Willow.**

* * *

_Green is for chlorophyll_

_by Arasinyah_

_Chapter __7_**_  
_**

It was an unpleasant feeling, being tossed around in a cage that was hurtling towards the ground so fast that she couldn't even think about teleporting out of there or phasing through the glass. It was made doubly unpleasant when in the process of rolling about in the cage she found herself hurtling into Thor, the god seemed to be made entirely out of steel and _it hurt_. It was only when the ground came disturbing close that she managed to get a hold of herself and just as she prepared to teleport herself and Thor out of the cage, an arm came around her waist and for the second time that day she found herself being pulled away, this time through a wall of glass that was shattering all around her as Mjolnir pierced through it.

Willow and Thor landed on the ground a bit away from the mangled remains of the cage after skidding through dirt and grass. Thor had fallen farther than her, breaking through a branch of a tree and even as she spat out the grass she had involuntarily ended up eating, she apologised to it. Trees, unlike animals, did not feel pain and were generally much more accepting of life and death in general. The young tree acknowledged her apologies gracefully but the birds that had been disturbed by Thor did not, chirping furiously. They quieted down when Huginn and Muninn dropped down and the meadow was soon silent again.

Willow got up and rolled her right shoulder, having landed on it hard and stumbled to Thor.

"Are you alright?"

Thor brushed splinters off himself and ignored her, walking further down to Mjolnir with stiff movements. When he looked at it but did not pick it up, she rolled her eyes and hosted it, stumbling under its weight before throwing it at him.

"We need to get a move on." She said even as he stared at her with wide eyes. "What? What's wrong? I mean other than the fact that your brother tried to kill you. And me."

"You picked up Mjolnir." He said in a breathy voice.

"I know, I was there. Oh wait there's some weird voodoo on it right? Made it really heavy? It was in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files."

"Only the worthy can pick her up, she has chosen you-"

Willow cut him off and instead turned to the hammer he still cradled in both hands like a baby bird. "Hi, Mjolnir, it's nice of you to choose me but I'm not really a hammer kind of girl. You're more of an offense than a defence kind of device and that makes you kind of useless to me. So thanks but no thanks, I'm sure Thor is better suited to you than I am." She looked up to Thor, impatient. "So shall we go?"

"I do not know where we are headed."

"Wherever Loki's going. The program had located the Tesseract before the helicarrier blew up and Bruce had seen it and been quite surprised actually. Maybe if we find him he can tell us, he shouldn't be too far away. Maybe Huginn and Muninn know?" She looked to the tree where they were perched questioningly.

_"Loki is shielded from our eyes."_

_"We cannot leave Thor now."_

_"It is against our orders."_

"I shall try to contact Heimdall." Thor said gravely.

"Oh cool so you-" She was cut off as he held Mjolnir up to the sky and lightning and thunder surrounded them. Willow put a hand over her ears to cut off the noise and between wanting to curse him for not giving her any warning whatsoever and drowning out the smell of things burning, she realised she still had the communicator Trevor had given her, fixed into her ear.

Finally Thor put the hammer down and she glared at him. "A warning would be nice. And was that necessary?"

Thor shrugged. "I had to get his attention. Heimdall do you know where Loki is?" He shouted into the sky. He kept his face upwards as if waiting for something and Willow pressed the call button on her communicator.

"Hello?"

Static noise met her and she realised their communication systems must be down, no one on the helicarrier could hear her and she thought back to where Loki could possibly be.

She hadn't really understood any of what Bruce and Tony had said about what the Tesseract needed to be activated so she pushed it out of her mind and thought of Loki and what he wanted.

Attention was on the top of that list. Like she had told Steve, what Loki wanted was not just a war but to be acknowledged as the reason for a war, to be a supreme ruler in this world. She was distracted when Thor began spluttering as it started raining, a light drizzle but considering that he had been waiting for, what to her, seemed to be voicemail via the sky, it was a worry.

"Does the rain mean anything?"

"It means that I used too much of my powers and created a storm instead of just getting some attention." He said blankly and sighed; they got up and began walking in a random direction, unable to stand by doing nothing.

"If you were Loki and you wanted attention what would you do?"

He turned to her with a quizzical look.

"Why?"

"Take a wild guess." She said sardonically.

"I am afraid I cannot think like Loki," He looked down suddenly apologetic, "I admit it was through a lack of trying and perhaps this drove him to his madness but-"

Huginn and Muninn interrupted him. _"Where would he __**get**__ attention?"_

"Honestly, anywhere. It's the digital age, camera phones and everything, he could just go anywhere in his costume-"

"Armour." Thor interrupted and she glared at him.

"-and get attention."

_"But if it weren't one?"_ Huginn asked.

_"You must remember that Loki is not of this world."_ Muninn continued.

_"Words like digital age mean nothing to him, he's a classicist."_

_"He needs his podium."_

"Oh well then in recent times if I think of the most attention grabbing incident I would say Tony's stint as Iron Man gets the most attention. He's rich, doesn't really hide the fact that he's a superhero and he has a red and gold suit." Ostentatious was the word that leapt to her mind but Tony was sweet albeit a drama queen and she didn't want to offend him, even if he wasn't there to hear it.

_"That sounds suitably like Loki, now think of what this Tony does to get attention."_

"He doesn't need to do much, he's already got his name in giant letters on a building and-" A curious expression took over her face. "You don't think-?"

"What do I not think?" Thor asked, confused. Iron Man did not hold much relevance to him, he only knew of Tony as the joker with the metal armour.

"Well Stark Tower gets a lot of attention not only because his name is written on it but also because it's a self sustaining building so it's on the news all the time, especially recently. Would Loki plan his next step there? Didn't Tony say something about kick-starting the Tesseract?"

"The Man of Iron did say something along those lines. I did not quite understand though."

"It's a building with a lot of energy stored in it which would be useful in using the Tesseract and it has Stark written in giant attention grabbing letters along the side which sounds like something Loki would appreciate. It's the best lead we have and even if it isn't the right place if we get to Stark Tower and manage to contact Tony, maybe he can help us."

Thor put an arm around her waist again and raised Mjolnir to the sky and she wriggled out of his grasp holding her hands up and shaking her head furiously.

"Do you know where Stark Tower is?"

"Well…no."

"Then just let me teleport us there, okay? This hero complex is sweet but completely unnecessary."Thor reluctantly nodded but she pulled back. "Thor there's something you need to do for me."

"Yes Lady Willow?"

"Don't fight Loki. You'll waste time fighting him when you could be saving others, don't engage him in any way. That's what he wants, he wants you to fight him so he can stick to his convictions that you're his enemy, it feeds his anger. Don't fight him, don't look for him, just help, okay?"

"I am not sure if-"

"Try, please. Because the fact is we don't really know how to switch off the tesseract and if you smack him around demanding that he turn it off he isn't really going to listen to you."

"I must try to convince him, he is my brother."

She sighed, knowing that this was a fight she wouldn't win. Siblings were odd like that, stubborn when it came to one another. "Fine." She reached out and put a hand on his forearm and within the blink of an eye they were standing in a stall of the unisex bathroom in a Thai restaurant on Park Avenue.

"This tower is not that impressive." Thor looked around. "I am not sure that Loki would be happy to begin his war here."

"That's because this isn't the tower, this is the closest place I know that I could safely teleport into." She opened the door and they stepped out to an empty bathroom much to her relief. "I've actually never seen the tower so if I make a wrong guess and landed even a foot to the left we would have ended up plummeting down and you might survive that but I won't."

They got out of the restaurant as quietly as they could and soon stepped out on a crowded NYC street.

"Where is this tower?"

"It's about a fifteen minute walk in that direction but that's-" Just as she said it Tony flew over the city in Iron Man regalia. She pressed a tentative hand to her communicator and was relieved to hear Agent Hill shouting out orders. "Maria!"

"Willow? You're alive?!"

"Yeah and we're in New York, I thought getting to Stark tower might be sensible and that's where we just saw Tony as well so I'm thinking this is ground zero."

"Sir, we have confirmation that Stark Tower is where the Tesseract is." Hill said presumably to Nick Fury and suddenly Willow heard him speak as well.

"Willow, you copy that?"

"_I'm_ the one who confirmed the info for you." She said exasperatedly and pointed Thor to follow Tony while she went the other way. He took off on foot, unable to navigate that well because of the heights of the buildings. "Look I've sent Thor off to the tower, I'm going to contact the local police and get them to start evacuations especially around Stark tower."

"You don't have the authority to order that, they won't listen to you-"

"Then you do that, I can at least get started. Besides the commissioner owes me one, I helped out during an Amber alert, it was his grandson."

"I'll call the precincts near Stark Tower."

"Kudos." With that she disappeared from view, reappearing in the police commissioner's office.

He was startled and papers went flying all over the place.

"Jesus Christ, you gave me a heart attack."

"Raymond, there's going to be an alien attack on the city soon and you need to order mass evacuations and set up a perimeter, get people off the streets." She said quickly keeping an eye trained outside the window.

"Is this some kind of joke?" He said getting off his chair angrily. "I know you helped me find my grandson, and I'm grateful for that I really am but-"

A loud boom sounded through the air and they raced to the window. Something odd was clearly going on at Stark Tower and he looked between her and the tower with unbelieving eyes.

"Please tell me it's a joke." He said flatly.

"Mate, if I wanted to play a joke on you would I really do it in a place where there's armed cops everywhere?" He continued staring at her in disbelief. "Raymond, make the call, order evacuations unless you want a huge body count."

He rolled his eyes and picked up his phone while she borrowed a hoodie that was on a chair nearby and his aviators.

"What are you taking those for?"

"I can't handle publicity the way Stark can and if I have to get involved which I probably will, then I don't want a media following." He paled notably at the thought of her getting involved and barked out orders as quick as he could and she teleported herself out of the place to the bridge that looked towards Stark Tower and found herself staring at the one thing she didn't want to see, a glowing light leading to a wormhole. From where she was standing it looked like there were fireworks going on in the distance but she knew it was probably things being blown up. All around her people were stepping out of their cars to look at this marvel and she rolled her eyes.

Willow found a store nearby and borrowed a megaphone. "Get out of the streets, you morons!" She yelled and the amplified sound drove the crowd into frenzy. "Off the streets, find tunnels or subways and get out of here!"

Luckily for her the evacuation orders had been given in time and the police were out in full force guiding civilians down subways and tunnels and roadblocks had been put up so not a lot of traffic would enter Lower Manhattan, unfortunately that still left a lot of people to be evacuated and she was afraid they wouldn't have enough time.

The chitauri army descended quickly and the flying scooters they were riding on had excellent mobility. They were soon gunning down the streets with their strange guns and the sound of screams filled the air.

"Stark we're on your three headed northeast." Natasha's voice filtered over the communicator that she had forgotten was in her ears.

"What, did you stop for drive through? Swing up Park, I'm gonna lay them out for you."

"Stark?" Willow said.

"Willow, you're okay?!"

"Yeah I'm fine, I guess I wasn't in range before, couldn't hear you. Look, just keep me updated on where you're blowing up things, I'm evacuating civilians here, I need to know which areas are safe."

"Roger that."

A stray chitauri blew up a car behind her and even as Tony followed closely and took him down Willow was there, helping the lady who was trapped under the car, the smoke from the fires billowing around them. She teleported the woman to the perimeter that had been set up, leaving her with a medic before turning to one of the police officers.

"Anybody trapped or stuck in a smoking building that I need to help?" She asked the man who continued looking at her with wide eyes. It took her a while to realise that it was because she'd appeared out of nowhere but eventually he gathered himself and stammered out a reply.

"No most people are accounted for, there are some people who're still in their buildings but they've moved to the basement and lower levels so they should be fine. I'll tell you as soon as there are any reports but for now it's under control."

"Okay tell me if anythin-" She was cut off when the quinjet that Natasha and Clint and Steve had been in crashed down, twirling in air before landing on the ground after breaking through layers of cement. "I think we'd best push back the perimeter a bit more." She suggested.

"On it."

Willow practically ran towards them. "Hey guys, what's up?" They ignored her in favour of looking up at the portal in a mixture of awe and apprehension and as she looked up towards it she realised why.

A creature from within the portal let out a roar and she gasped and clutched her head, feeling the pain and anger in that sound more heavily than anyone there. The armoured leviathan like creature glided down towards them and they watched with gaping mouths as it passed. From the armour, chitauri warriors leaped off clinging to the walls of the skyscraper.

Willow followed the motion of one as it flew through the glass of a window and as screams resounded from there she realised there were civilians in there. She flicked her hand towards the window, making a pulling motion and the chitauri warrior flew out of there with a scream a rope of transparent green light wrapped around it and as it flew towards them, Natasha fired her gun and he fell to the ground.

"Stark are you seeing this?" Steve said.

"Seeing...still working on believing. Where's Banner, has he shown up yet?"

"Banner?"

"Just keep me posted."

With every sinuous smooth movement it made she paled further, fingers curling on the asphalt as she felt its pain in her head. Willow didn't know what tortures it had faced under the chitauri but she knew that between Thor and Tony they wouldn't face any better with the Avengers unless she told them not to.

She got to her feet shakily, blood staining under her fingernails where she'd gripped the ground too hard and as Tony ran a laser over its armour and she crashed again under a wave of searing pain as the laser heated the metal and it burnt into the leviathan, she screamed.

"Tony don't hurt it!" Willow cried out and they looked at her in surprise.

"What do you mean don't hurt it?!"

"The chitauri, they're fair game, I can feel their bloodlust, it's natural. But the leviathans, they're in pain, so much pain, they don't want to hurt anybody, just give me a lift and let me talk to them."

"You can't be serious?!" Steve exclaimed.

"They're just the horses, it's not their war, I can feel-" She broke off stumbling once again. "They hurt _so much_."

"Fine, I'm picking you up." Tony made a u-turn and swooped down grabbing hold of her under her arms and lifting her into the sky.

Willow dangled, trying to keep herself still so she wouldn't be too difficult to fly with.

"Where should I drop you off?"

"On top of it would be best."

"Are you crazy?!"

"Just do it!"

"The second it hurts you I'm coming after it, JARVIS find me a soft spot." He flew overhead it and went down as close as he could and without any warning she swung herself off, landing on its armoured head with a jolt and it growled.

This would either end well or very, very badly.


	8. Chapter 8

******Disclaimer: I own nothing but Willow.**

* * *

_Green is for chlorophyll_

_by Arasinyah_

_Chapter_ _8_

The second she landed on its head, the leviathan bucked hard trying to throw her off. Willow laid flat on the metal armour and whimpered, hoping she'd be able to hold on and dug her trembling hands into the armour.

"Why do you hurt so much?" She said in a shaky voice trying not to cry from the pain it felt. "What's wrong?"

It didn't answer simply let out another roar and she sobbed as yet another wave of pain went through her, projected form the whale. Willow hated herself for what she was about to do next but she had no choice, if they continued like this the Avengers would destroy them, already she could see Bruce hulking out below them and there was little time left. Pushing the pain rolling off the leviathan out of her brain she forced herself to calm down and projected her own calm onto the giant creature. She whispered soft soothing words to it and abruptly it stopped, coming to a standstill on the highway and she repeated her words, knowing that it would be able to respond now.

"What's wrong?"

_"The armour it hurts!"_ She heard it say as clear as day even though all the others could hear was an angry growl. Tony moved in closer but she waved him off impatiently.

"I'll do my best to help but you have to stop moving, it'll only hurt you more!"

_"Will you free us?"_

"I want to and I will try but you have to _let_ me help you!" The giant leviathan slowed down and dipped lower to the ground, stilling in its movements entirely allowing her to get off.

_"Please take this metal cage off me, it hurts IT HURTS!"_

"How do," She stopped to catch her breath. Willow could feel their pain rolling through her, it was immense and overpowering and made it hard for her to breath let alone talk and she wondered how much worse it was for them to actually feel it. "How do I get this armour off you?" She managed to say before falling to her knees.

_"It is pinned at the bottom."_ The leviathan told her and she nodded before setting to work.

The minute she realised that when it said pinned it meant literally, because there were giant pins that looked like oversized railway spikes hammered through the armour and into the soft flesh of their middle. It was horrifying and took her a few seconds to stop the bile from rising up her throat. She grasped one such spike and doing her best to ignore the painful grunt it emitted, she pulled it out throwing her whole body into it. One sliver of the armour was loosened and even before the bloody stake fell to the ground, the puckered skin revealed began healing itself curling inwards protectively.

A soft sigh of relief came from the giant and it soothed her, allowing her o get up and start on the rest. Before long, most of its armour was loosened and with a ripple of its body the leviathan shook off the chunks of metal. The other leviathans had heard his initial sound of pain and come over to watch and surrounded the two in silence. Willow nearly fell back to the ground again, feeling their pain combined with the ecstasy that the one she had freed was feeling.

_"Our turn?"_ One of them said and she pushed the pain aside to nod and began working on each one.

"Watch out!" Came Tony's voice and startled she jumped to the side narrowly avoiding a blast form a chitauri warrior who was watching them but before Tony or she could react one of the leviathans flicked their armour covered tail and the chitauri flew up into the air for a full fifteen seconds before beginning its descent, landing with a splat.

"The chitauri-"

_"Are ours to kill. They have commanded us for too long."_ The one free leviathan let out a bellow that sounded throughout the city of New York and the chitauri shrieked in response. The few leviathans still in the portal them heard the call and drew closer, flicking the chitauri off and killing them even as they poured out the portal in answer to his call. They stayed low on the round, now making their way through the city carefully, trying to cause less damage and flew down to her.

Willow lifted a hand to the communicator. "Tony the armour pins on the bottom, instead of trying to kill them just take it off, it's barbaric."

"Got it."

Without the leviathans on their side the battle soon came to a near standstill, the chitauri were easier to kill and with Willow having evacuated most of the city the Avengers didn't have to worry much about collateral damage. More and more of the leviathans were freed and as they did they joined the battle against the chitauri, their bodies accepting the pain of the blasts the chitauri aimed at them as nothing compared to that of the armour.

But with every leviathan came a flurry of the chitauri and this caused problems. Now that the leviathans had joined the Avengers, the chitauri took great pleasure in targeting them which put Willow in the middle of a hotspot. A flying scooter zoomed overhead and launched a volley of blasts down the street toward her and some of the foot soldiers began creeping up on the building s around her. She used the armour that the leviathans shrugged off as a shield and with a flick of her hand a pale green rope wound itself around the chitauri's hands and their weapons fell down with a clatter. She proceeded to repeat the procedure for all the other chitauri she could see before stringing them up onto a single thread and fixing it onto the back of one of the flying scooters that Tony was leading down that street.

"Clint, I've attached some hanger-ons to the ones Tony's bringing over." She said into her communicator. She would never ever be okay with killing anything but that didn't mean she wouldn't help line them up, especially since she could sense absolutely no emotion from the chitauri except for bloodlust, even the pain seemed to excite them into violence.

"Keep them coming." Clint replied. "Captain, the bank on 42nd past Madison, they've cornered a lot of civilians down there."

"I'm on it." She heard Steve answer panting heavily and it occurred to her that she had been pretty useless for most of the battle.

"Call me if you need any help evacuating them, this is the last leviathan I need to free."

"Roger that." Steve replied and when she didn't hear form him for a few minutes she presumed the situation to be under control.

"Stark, you hear me? You have a missile headed straight for the city."

"How long?"

"What do you mean there's a missile headed for the city?!" Willow shrieked but Fury ignored her. She spent a few minutes helping the leviathans take off armour and suddenly there was a missile headed for the city?

"Three minutes, max. The payload will wipe out midtown."

"Fury, talk to me what do you mean there's a missile headed for Manhattan?!" Willow said, one hand on her ear while the other pulled out the last pin.

"The World Security Council overrode my authority and ordered a nuclear attack to contain the alien invasion."

"I cannot believe these people are in charge of the security of the world!" She ran over to where Steve and Thor were, the leviathans following close behind.

"I can close it. Does anybody copy? I can shut the portal down." Natasha said in a trembling voice.

"Do it!" Steve exclaimed but Tony stopped them.

"No, wait."

"Stark, these things are still coming!"

Willow hoped Tony wasn't going to do what she thought he was going to do.

"I got a nuke coming in, it's gonna blow in less than a minute. And I know just where to put it." Her hopes were dashed.

"Stark you know that's a one way trip." Steve stated the obvious.

"Don't do it Tony, that's suicidal!" Willow screamed but he had already turned off all communications between them and her pleas went ignored as he flew hard and fast into the portal.

"Come on Stark." Natasha's voice was surprisingly soft and Willow watched with the rest, waiting for Tony to come back out.

A few seconds went by and the chitauri fell to the ground, lifeless, suggesting that Tony had succeeded in putting the nuke away but wouldn't be making that return trip.

"Close it." Steve said and the light making its way up into the sky leading to the portal stopped abruptly.

The portal itself remained open closing slowly and just as it was almost closed Tony fell out of it.

"Son of a gun." Willow could hear the smile in Steve's voice but realised that his blasters weren't deploying, he wasn't slowing down. The leviathan bellowed and made its way towards Tony to save him but before they could reach, the Hulk swung off a building, snatching him in mid air and landing roughly on the ground.

The Avengers moved towards him and Thor tore off the face plate from Tony's Iron Man suit. He wouldn't be very happy about it later but it would be fine once he was reminded of all the other damage his suit had sustained.

"The arc reactor…" She didn't want o think about what that meant but maybe someone could tell her something over the communicator it wouldn't stay like that for long, "It's not glowing."

Silence was all that was heard until the Hulk roared, the sound jolting Tony and suddenly he breathed, lived, snarked. "What the hell? What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me!"

Willow couldn't help it, in that moment the sheer victory she felt coursing through her was only amplified by their own feelings of triumph. "Steve did kiss you but don't worry, he didn't use tongue." She said seriously and Tony spluttered before realising it was a joke. Steve ignored them to look around.

"We won."

"All right hey! Hurray, good job guys, let's just not come in tomorrow, let's just take a day. Have you ever tried shawarma?" Even Steve had to laugh at his tenacity. "There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is but I want to try it."

"Is shawarma vegan?" Willow asked but Thor looked up at Stark tower gravely.

"We're not finished yet." And they realised they had forgotten about Loki. For a man hell bent on taking over the world through war, he hadn't entered the fray much.

"And then shawarma after." Tony was adamant that they try shawarma and Willow was starting to think he wasn't joking.

"You guys go ahead, I need to talk to them." She jabbed a thumb at the leviathans behind her who were still waiting patiently.

"Great I'll need a bit of a kickstart for that," Tony winced and turned to Thor. "Hey Point Break, do the lightning thing would you?"

"I don't understand?"

"Well last time you tried to zap me with lightning my power just jumped up to four hundred percent. Do that again and I'll be able to get us all up there easy-peasy."

Thor swung Mjolnir around a few times and aimed a bolt of lightning at Tony. The sudden charge of electricity shocked him but when it receded the arc reactor in his chest glowed a big bright blue and he picked up the Hulk and Steve easily and shot up into the sky, Thor following close by.

Willow sighed in relief looking at the now clear skies. It had only been a few hours since she'd been falling to the ground in the glass prison and she stood in uptown New York, the battle over already. She'd always thought these things happened over a long period of time but this at least was surprisingly short. Although having a team of super humans and two incredibly motivated assassins had probably helped a lot.

She looked away form the skies with a smile that slid off her face when she saw thirty leviathans just floating all around her, the fins on their sides flapping gently.

"Umm, hi!"

_"You freed us."_

"Yeah, I guess I did." She did not know how to react to this. The last time she had freed an animal it had been a deer that had been caught in a trap and it had run away immediately. The situation dulled in comparison to the current one where she'd rescued giant space whales from the control of a bloodthirsty warrior species also from outer space, and she was lost.

_"We are in your debt."_

"That's okay; you saved my life quite a few times by fighting the chitauri so let's call it even." When they continued looking at her she rubbed the back of her neck nervously. "So, do you guys have to get home or something?"

_"We are nomads, travelling through space, we have no home."_

"So you don't have any plans?"

_"We shall return to the barren moon and destroy any living chitauri."_

"Well I don't want to keep you waiting any longer." The few leviathans at the back began flying away, surprisingly fast for such huge creatures. She turned to the leviathan that had been talking to her. "So, would you mind giving me a lift?"

Willow stepped off the leviathan's back onto the floor of Stark tower and tottered in, careful to avoid the few glass shards still lying about. When she found her standing she turned back to the whale waving to it as it flew away with the others. Within seconds they had gone so far away she couldn't even see them anymore and then she finally saw the Avengers there with Loki on the stairs with Mjolnir on his foot, grounding him there.

Bruce and Tony simply stared out the window in amazement at the point where the leviathan had been, Thor was looking at his brother as if wondering where he'd gone wrong and Steve was debriefing Fury while the two assassins stood a few feet away from Loki and glared at him.

"Oh my God, group hug everyone!" Natasha disappeared so quickly Loki wondered if she could do magic too, Steve and Thor simply looked confused and Agent Barton faked a migraine from leftover sceptre control before fleeing.

"Pepper won't approve."

"Sure she would I've already cleared it with her!" She said and pulled him and Bruce into a hug before making big 'come here' gestures at the other two. "Come on, hug ball!"

"I do not understand what is this hugba-" Before Thor could complete his sentence he was pulled into the group hug by his cape and Tony shrieked as the God's foot fell upon his toe.

"It's a big hug! Come on Steve, or I'll give you a personalised hug and I know you're way too uncomfortable with the opposite sex for that."

He stepped forward immediately. "Yes Ma'am."

They stayed like that for some time before she finally let them go and turned to the still injured God of Mischief who was looking at them with barely disguised confusion. "Your turn!"

"No!" Bruce protested turning a bit green at the edges and Loki flinched.

"Ma'am, please step back."

"Lady you are crazy." Tony said.

"Lady Willow, I am afraid my brother will not accept-"

Ignoring their protests she threw her arms around the god, careful of his injuries and ran a soothing hand down his back that wasn't really that soothing because he stiffened when she did so.

"What are you doing?" Loki looked up to Thor with wide eyes as if trying to say 'Save me'

"It's okay guys, his head isn't as cuckoo as before."

"What?"

"Well I don't know what happened while I wasn't here but he's better now. Not entirely mentally stable of course, he's still quite sad and angry but it's not as hazy as before."

"After I hit Clint in the head the sceptre's control over him went away." Natasha said.

"Well he looks pretty beat up, did anyone hit him over the head? Possibly repeatedly?" She looked him over in concern and he glared at her.

"The beast-"

"Hulk." She corrected.

"The Hulk threw me around like a rag doll." Loki admitted. "It…cleared things up."

"So you _were_ under the control of the sceptre!" Thor said a sudden light to his eyes now that he could explain his brother's odd behaviour.

"The sceptre didn't _control_ me."

"It muddled him." Loki shot her a look and Willow rolled her eyes. "Well it's true, control is too organised a term for what it really did to you, you were all over the place, it scrambled your emotions."

He stayed quiet, clenching his jaw.

"So," Tony said. "_Now_ can we have shawarma?"


	9. Chapter 9

******A/N: I keep forgetting to thank you all for your faves and follows and reviews so to whomsoever is still reading this, thanks.**

******Disclaimer: I own nothing but Willow.**

* * *

_Green is for chlorophyll_

_by Arasinyah_

_Chapter_ _9_

She turned to look at him, opened her mouth as if to say something, snapped her jaw shut and looked away from him with a sigh. She'd been doing this every few minutes for the past half hour and it was beginning to get on Loki's nerves.

When the beast (Hulk, her voice reproached in his head and he clenched his hands at the thought of someone messing around in his brain again) had thrown him about, the sudden lucidity had kept him there in the crater on the floor for what felt like ages. It was like he could suddenly see in colour after years of seeing things in black and white, he was breathing pure oxygen after ages of inhaling smoke, clarity, sheer unbridled clarity and with that the knowledge of what his punishment would be.

At the very least, a lifetime of imprisonment and he would be grateful for it if it meant that Thanos wouldn't be able to get to him.

Even as the Avengers surrounded him he had maintained his cool. There was nothing left to lose now, what did it matter how he behaved. And then the great saviours had trotted out leaving him there mentioning something about shawarma with only the strange girl and Mjolnir for company.

"So," She finally said and he almost sagged in relief that he wouldn't have to hear her sigh every few seconds. "Does it hurt?"

"Does what hurt?" He spat out, refusing to look at her.

"Having the Mjolnir on your foot like that. And the other injuries too but mainly the foot thing." She said awkwardly and it was his turn to sigh.

"It doesn't hurt, I just can't get up."

"Cause it was pretty heavy when I lifted it but it's not like Thor slammed it-"

"You lifted the Mjolnir?!" He turned so fast his head sang with pain and she flinched. She must have felt his pain, he realised.

"Umm, yes?"

"Only the worthy can lift her."

"Oh yeah, Thor mentioned that. Is that why you're pinned by it? Because she doesn't think you're worthy?"

"So you can lift it off me right now?" He barrelled on, ignoring the latter half of her sentence and the pang it caused.

"Yeah probably."

"Then why don't you? Didn't you say I wasn't muddled by the sceptre anymore?" He pressed, checking to see which buttons he could push and prod and manipulate.

She simply shot him a look. "I'm nice, not stupid. And I'm not really that nice even."

He scoffed and earned a gurgle of laughter in return. From the broken windows they saw evening creeping over New York. The sounds of sirens and cars were far away enough that they could ignore it and the silence was oddly comforting.

"Red sails in the sunset, way out on the sea, oh, carry my loved one, home safely to me." She sang as the sky bled orange and pink.

"Sentiment."

"Says the man who reeks of unresolved issues and emotional upheaval so intense I can feel it without trying." She said in her sing song voice and he glared at her. "What's all that then, if not 'sentiment'?"

He wasn't really angry at her, found himself unable to be so. She gave him no pity, no sympathy, did not make excuses for his behaviour but just sat there. She was just keeping him company, offering him her presence without being intrusive, even when she spoke it was a soft melodic sound and he found he rather liked that. She was allowing his thoughts to wander while being his rock and keeping him grounded at the same time. After an age spent believing and operating under thoughts and ideas that weren't even his, he appreciated that.

That didn't mean he was going to tell her all that.

"Do you want me to get a first aid kit for your injuries?" She gestured at the various cuts on his face. A friction burn on his forehead in particular wasn't healing as fast as he expected it to, probably because of his Jotunn heritage.

"It will heal on its own."

"Yes but…infection. Septicaemia is a serious issue."

Loki shrugged. "I am immune to the diseases of this land, but you may disinfect my wounds." He finished imperiously.

She snorted, "Thank you your highness.", and ran off, returning moments later with a box with a red cross on it and began to rub a stinging potion to his cuts and scrapes.

This close he finally took the time to look at her, really look at her. It was, if he were honest, a plain face. Brown hair, brown eyes, mouth not notably small or big and a soft jaw. But it was transformed with the life she emanated. The eyes sparkled, the hair rustled, even the freckles on her nose seemed to laugh. It was as if someone had given her a gift and her very pores were radiating with joy and spirit.

"Are you used to battle?" He asked and she shot him a questioning look. "You didn't seem surprised or panicked."

He had watched her from a distance. For someone who wasn't fighting at all she had been remarkably useful, her sympathy for the leviathans having cut his army in half. Defeat by kindness, there was something he had never expected.

"I'm not used to battle; I'm used to the aftermath. You and the Avengers, you're the fighters. Which really just means breaking things, breaking people. No matter what side you're on, when you're fighting you're all the same, just forces of destruction." There was a bitter edge to her voice. "I'm the one who helps fix things, cleans up the messes left behind. I help the people rebuild their houses and bury the dead once the _warriors_ are done hitting stuff." She blinked furiously and it occurred to him that she had done this often which struck him as strange. By Midgardian terms she was fairly young, where could she have amassed such experience to begin with?

Before he could voice the question the elevator dinged. Even with all the destruction that he and the Hulk had wrought upon Stark Tower, it remained nearly fully functional after a bit of tinkering around by Iron Man. That arc reactor, Loki decided, was something else. While a lot of the technology on Midgard wasn't quite comparable to that on Asgard, he remained surprised by the enormous scope of it.

One by one the Avengers came out, dragging their feet, their mood completely different from the victorious ones they had left with.

"Lady Willow," Thor stomped over and Loki fought the urge to punch him in the throat to shut him up. Hearing Thor's booming voice reminded him of all that he had lost on Asgard as well as here and the year he'd spent on the Barren Moon. The effect was not unlike being rammed by a bilgesnipe while wyrms screeched their fiery hearts out. "I hope my brother hasn't given you too much trouble?"

"Not at all. In fact I think I might start needling him to get him talking more, he's far too quiet." She said sunnily and Agent Romanoff gestured for her to join them a bit away from him at the kitchen counter while Agent Barton scowled, hands twitching, presumably for an arrow. "It seems S.H.I.E.L.D. has some questions," She bobbed her head at him politely, "If you would excuse me?"

He sat unnerved and even the Avengers gave her a strange look when she did not move to leave. It was only after some time passed that he realised she was actually asking for permission.

"Certainly." He said and she walked off and he was left exchanging confused looks with the rest.

What a strange child.

"What's wrong?" Willow asked Natasha as soon as she came close to her. Given their history they tended to stay away from one another unless working.

"I need you to stay with Banner."

"Why?"

"On the way back from the shawarma place we saw a lot of the smashed buildings and paramedics and fire-fighters which made him a bit green, I'm afraid he's going to lose it again. The others aren't taking it too well either." Natasha sighed. "I'm worried about them."

Thor had lifted Mjolnir off Loki's foot and pulled him up to join the rest at the table. Clint glared at him but didn't say anything as he didn't resist Thor's manhandling.

Now that the fight was over they were sitting in silence, some thinking of the lives they had saved, others thinking of the ones they hadn't and one lone person sat there with Mjolnir back on his foot, silent even though she could smell the constant fear reeking from him. It wasn't the Avengers that Loki was afraid of; she knew this because even when Bruce came closer he didn't really react despite apparently being thrown into the floor repeatedly by the Hulk. No, it was something else entirely and so she kept a closer eye on him.

"Want to see a trick?" Willow asked in an attempt to break the tension that had surrounded the group.

Everyone at the table looked up at her with blank faces. Finally it was Loki who broke the silence.

"What kind of magic trick?" He asked ignoring the glares pinned on him and Thor puffed up in happiness.

"A silly simple one, but it might just be what you all need." Willow answered.

"Sure why not, I could go for silly magic tricks, that pizza is really late." Tony complained.

"We just had shawarma and you're still hungry?!" Natasha snorted.

"Hey I'm a growing boy." Tony said insolently and elbowed Willow's side, childishly.

Willow's face broke into a face splitting grin and almost instantaneously the mood was lifted. She just had that kind of a smile, contagious and genuine and the slouched figures sat up a bit more straight in anticipation. Willow cupped her hands around her mouth and blew into them, when she pulled them away a little light rested in her palms. It flickered gently and glowed brighter as she blew upon it until it glittered like a little piece of a star in her hands and they stared in wonder. The light was still out in most of the city, power lines had been felled in the battle and so against the dark background of the night sky it shone even more sweetly.

"Wow." Steve said and moved closer to see it. She bounced it off her hand and it floated around the room before letting the wind carry it out the window and over the city.

"It's just a parlour trick." Loki whispered to Thor, confused by their reactions to it. They had all been part of a battle that was extraordinary, even he would admit that they had done themselves proud and yet here they were in a childish glee, delighted by something that fireflies could do.

"Light means a lot to those who are fighting the darkness of their minds." Thor said, for once almost poetic in his thought. The two had stayed behind while the rest went over to the window to watch Willow blow little bubbles of light and float them down onto the city, some moving up to light up the sky like floating lanterns others swarming down to help the people who were out and about on the streets. "It's hope."

"When did you become so smart?"

"When I had to depend upon others to survive and they taught me how to live."

Eventually the whole city that had been drenched in darkness was lit up by these floating lights.

"The sceptre," Loki said softly and everyone's eyes turned ot him, his voice heard loud and clear in the silence, "It can still grab hold of you."

"What do you mean?" Tony asked stepping forward while the rest surrounded Loki with a glares. Willow sighed and slowly made her way over to them in anticipation of a fight. The adrenaline had yet to run off for most of them.

"The sceptre, it works your mind until you're malleable. On humans it takes effect in mere seconds, on Asgardians it takes a bit…longer."

"How much longer?" Clint said suspiciously, his hand twitching for an arrow.

"Well it's still trying to subdue me so, more than a year at least."

"I thought you weren't in control when you tried to take over the world." Barton turned to Willow for answers even though he directed the question to Loki.

"He was but his mind was very muddled. It's like all the stupid things you do when you're drunk, it's all on you but the alcohol does have some part to play in it. One year of trying to subdue him means that even if he wasn't malleable his emotions were still all over the place. Like someone had given him the opposite of valium. Thought process took a backseat to pure emotion."

"Valium?" Thor said and Loki and Steve sported a similarly quizzical look.

"It's drug that calms you down essentially, makes you relaxed and used to treat anxiety disorders and the like and whatever they did to him it had the opposite effect." She explained patiently and turned to Loki. "Did I do your condition justice?"

He gave a tight nod and swallowed before elaborating. "I would have done it any way. Even without the Mind gem, if it took a planned invasion into Midgard to get away from the chitauri and Thanos, I would have done it."

Steve stepped forward threateningly. "And all the people that died now? You would have done it to them without another thought?"

Loki smirked but it was a sad smile. "Trust me Soldier, death is a better fate than what the Midgardians would have to deal with if The Other led the invasion and if I hadn't fallen into the void it would have been him leading." Steve remained unconvinced, a vein ticking in his jaw and Loki continued rolling his eyes. "When a god who has no issues committing the genocide of his own species tells you there are worse fates than death, you should believe it."

"I thought they needed you to open the portal?" Tony said.

"My presence and knowledge sped up the process but they would have found their way to Midgard eventually. It might have taken them a bit longer but they could have taken over this realm with or without me. The preparations for the invasion were well under way when I fell into their clutches."

"How did the sceptre work on you, brother?" Thor asked still confused. "It would not be the first time you have been taken prisoner but you have never broken before." Loki took a deep angry breath at that and even Tony shook his head at Thor.

"This is really depressing me." Willow commented. "Are you seriously asking him that?!"

Thor flushed but Loki answered his questions nonetheless.

"The sceptre is merely the conduit for the Mind gem. I do not know from whence it came but I know how it works." They were all listening rapt. "Thanos is her only master, his own prowess at breaking the minds of mortals and gods alike, second only to her own. He is the nearest to her equal and so she accepts him unlike all others.

From the moment the sceptre touches you, the Mind gem begins to see your life, your very memories are an open book to it. For mortals who have lived short lives, this process is almost instantaneous, just one touch and within seconds it knows you inside out, knows which buttons to push, the right words you need to hear for you to do its bidding. Her effects on me are somewhat diminished by the magicks I practise. However between Thanos, the Mind gem and…the tortures of the chitauri even my mind stumbled. It helped that I was not thinking too clearly when I fell into The Void, having received some," He took a deep breath, "disturbing news."

"This is all because you were adopted?" Tony said with his usual lack of sensitivity. When Loki glared at him he held up his hands defensively, shifting blame. "Thor told us."

"He told you that I was left to die by my birth father, the Jotunn king Laufey who waged war against all the realms? He told you I was stolen from a temple by Odin, the very man who defeated Laufey ? He told you that I was living this lie for thousands of years and no one thought to tell me the truth? He told you that I found out that I was the very same monster that I had been brought up to think of as my blood enemy and then Odin conveniently fell into Odinsleep just as I demanded answers to these questions?! Did he tell you that?!" He was shaking by the end of his diatribe, voice rising with every word he spoke and his audience was left stunned.

"…_That_ he left out." Willow said and cleared her throat. "So, back to the sceptre."

"I thought the head injury cleared that up."Barton said.

Loki took a shaky breath, forcing himself to relax while Thor curled in on himself, ashamed."It severed the connection but the memories it contains remain within it. It Thanos or any such mind readers were to find themselves in possession of the sceptre then the memories contained in it would be theirs to use as they wished."

"So how do we wipe it's slate blank?" Willow asked one of the few people in the room who could keep up with what he meant.

"If an empath uses the Mind gem and travels through the memories stored…" Loki trailed off.

"Oh." Realisations dawned on Willow's face a few seconds later. "_Oh_! You mean if someone like me goes into it and gives the memory versions of the people therapy?"

"Essentially. But you would have to let the gem control you if only for the duration of the process." Loki was well aware of what he was asking of her but it was the only way for the sceptre to loosen its shackles from him.

She took a deep breath and sighed, every muscle relaxing along with it and the Avengers marvelled at her ability to let the tension out, themselves still too wound up from the fight.

"I'm scared." She declared and Thor put a hand on her shoulder. "This Mind gem amplifies bad feelings. While I don't usually have a lot of those it does tend to bring it out in me. I would prefer not to do this at all but that would be stupid."

"You don't have to do it Willow." Bruce said softly and she flashed him a smile before looking away, thinking over it carefully.

"I do. There are other empaths, of course, stronger ones that S.H.I.E.L.D. has in its ranks but they're frankly a lot more screwed up than I am, the sceptre would be able to control them. It's best that I do this, when Loki tried to use the sceptre on me it didn't work so it does stand to reason that I should do this. But I'm still scared."

"I could go with you." Loki offered and Thor beamed, while the rest were clearly sceptic. "I can't help but I should be able to help you stay grounded and not get lost."

Willow smiled gratefully, 'That would be appreciated."

"So when do we do this?"

"Now." Loki and Willow chorused.

"The longer we wait the more it feeds off our emotions." Loki explained.

"Plus if Fury find out this is what we're doing he'd be _pissed_." Willow snorted and rolled her eyes breaking the tension that had formed over the group. "So how do we do this?" She directed her questions to Loki.

He pulled her to the table and the two sat down the sceptre in between the two on the table.

"It's quite simple, touch the Mind Gem and clear your mind. After a few seconds it will call to you, your instinct will be to get away from it but ignore that and go towards the pull."

"Right, meditate and ignore instinct."

Willow placed a hand on the glowing blue gem and instantly felt a jolt and flinched. Loki put his hand over hers and with a nod both closed their eyes only for her to open hers briefly and turn to Bruce.

"If I get glowy blue eyes, smash me about on the floor would you?"

He smiled."Absolutely."

She closed her eyes once again.


	10. Chapter 10

******A/N: I'm late on updates and I am so sorry about it, I try to stick to a schedule but real life got in the way and having no reference for the origin story of Movie!verse Clint delayed things. Thanks for anyone who read, reviewed, faved or followed, you guys rock.**

******Disclaimer: I own nothing but Willow.**

* * *

_Green is for chlorophyll_

_by Arasinyah_

_Chapter_ _10_

It was easier said than done, emptying the mind. Willow and Loki were both thinkers in particular and the act of shaking off all thoughts was unnatural to them. It took some time but eventually they both relaxed, reaching a calm state.

Willow didn't feel the thrall of the mind gem call out to her instantly, far too much at peace for that. She was calm and content and as such it took the gem a while to pull her in but eventually she felt it and ignoring the voice in her head that told her to wake up she let herself be pulled by the gem. IT felt like floating in the ocean with a current that directed her and she drifted about before being deposited in a memory standing on the grounds of an abandoned circus.

Colourful tents rose all around her and even though it was eerily quiet there was an air of dulled festivity to it, the smell of popcorn and cotton candy in the air. But this was the part of a circus that she hadn't explored before, the backstage and there were caravan hitched to cars with the colourful names written on them shifting constantly.

"He is confused." Loki's voice and she turned to find him next to her, his own eyes on the shifting words painted on the carriages.

"What do you mean?"

"He has probably been in many such displays of pageantry. They are blurring in his mind as inconsequential details."

They walked forward toward the main tent that seemed to be the most stable detail in there, unchanging even as the other minutiae flickered almost constantly.

She stopped to stand outside an empty cage that once held an animal and shook her head sadly.

"Animals don't belong in circuses."

"And people don't belong in mind controlling gems, but here we are, now can we get a move on?" He snarked.

"Touchy touchy."

"The longer we stay here the more memories it takes form me and then you'll have to keep on-" He looked around, worried.

"You know none of this would ever happen if people just took the time to face their problems and deal with them instead of suppressing it." She complained as they walked towards the main tent. Abruptly the landscape stopped moving and the leaves fluttering down from the trees stopped. They flew back up and attached themselves to the trees, the music playing in the background reversing itself. "What's going on?"

"The memory resets itself and plays again, on loop. The memory versions of people relive their pains, it is how the Mind Gem controls."

"Oh dear." They broke out into a run and soon reached the main tent.

When they walked into the empty ring they saw a much younger Clint in the main tent sobbing over the body of a man who bore a remarkable likeness to him and had an arrow sticking out his chest.

"It's his brother." Loki said in a heartbreakingly soft voice and she knew he was thinking about how he had stabbed Thor. "He told me when I was controlling him. He killed Trickshot, a masked criminal and found out later that it was his brother Barney. Barney was Trickshot's apprentice and when Trickshot needed to disappear he left Barney to impersonate him and leaked his location to Clint knowing that this would be the result."

"Oh."

"I didn't realise," Loki stumbled over his words. "I didn't expect that he would be this young when he-" He broke off and she sighed.

"The world needs more therapists." She said and walked into the tent and Clint looked up at the sound of her arrival clutching his brother's body even closer as if shielding him from her.

"What do you want?"

"To help."

"I killed my brother." He said.

"I know." She sat down next to him, Loki noted it to be her modus operandi. She would sit down next to a person and wait for them to accept her presence before going any further. It didn't take long, her very presence in this memory had already lightened it up a great deal, Loki had noticed that the sky outside didn't seem as cloudy anymore. "I'm sorry."

"Why? You didn't kill him, I did." He cradled his brother's head closer, chanting in sibilant tones. "I killed him, I killed him-"

"Did you kill him because he's your brother?"

"No! No, but he was," Clint swallowed. "He killed a family, they used to come to the circus a lot and he killed them. I watched him do it and he said." He broke off, shuddering. "He said that they didn't deserve to be happy. Not when we had to fight so hard just to live."

"I'm sorry Clint."

"It's not his fault you know. He got messed up in his head. Our father used to hit him and...and-" He fell apart into sobs.

"Clint it's okay. It's okay to be sad, it's okay to miss him. You can mourn your brother it's okay to do so, but you have to forgive yourself for what you did as well. You won't forget but at least forgive. You did what you had to."

"Did I?"

"He would have hurt others if you did."

"I know but-"

"Was he a good brother?"

He choked out a sobbing laugh."He was the best."

"Remember that then Clint. Bury the bad and remember the good."

Before her eyes the scenery began to shift, both the Bartons turning slowly transparent and then fading until she was surrounded by darkness, Loki right next to her. A fluorescent light flickered into existence somewhere to her right and she turned to look at it but was blinded by its brightness. Willow blinked a couple of times and when she could see again she was in a lab.

Erik Selvig sat in front of her frantically jotting things down in a journal referencing many books and occasionally shifting to the Tesseract to poke and prod at it. The dark gouges under his eyes on his face indicated that he had not slept for days and up on a perch a flickering Hawkeye watched them over.

Selvig muttered abrupt words, the Tesseract featuring prominently in his talks. Most of the words he used went over her head but she recognised the maniacal look in his eye. This was a man in his mad scientist mode, lost to the world.

"Erik." She called out to get his attention.

"Not now I need to learn the Tesseract."

She stood there wondering what to do when an idea came to her. She went over to where Loki was leaning against a pillar and grabbing his hand, she pulled him over to Erik's workstation.

"Erik, this man here is Thor's brother, he knows all about the Tesseract."

This got his attention and with some gentle prodding on her behalf Loki took the reins of the conversation. He leaned forward and looked over Erik's notes.

"Ah you see, your calculations are incorrect," He began making corrections to the sheet of paper even as Selvig nearly tore his hair out to stop him. "See?"

Erik went over the corrected notes and stare din disbelief.

"My God! You do know the Tesseract!" He stared at Loki in awe and the God shrugged.

"I've had a few thousand years to work on my calculations."

"Erik you need to relax, this crazy running around isn't doing you any good. You need your REM sleep. "

"But the Tesseract-"

"Is a sentient object and when it wants you to know the answers you will know them." Loki said in a matter of fact way. "You Midgardians have already advanced so much in the last hundred years, you'll get there eventually. Obsessing over it won't help."

"You're right. I'll get there when I should. Sure it'll take some time but most things do, String theory hasn't even been proven yet!" Willow gave him a thumbs up even as Loki turned around to mouth to her 'Really?!'. "This is crazy, I need to calm down." He said to himself and once again the world faded to black.

* * *

Tony was and always would be, above everything else, a man of science. This meant that he saw the world in the form of equations, in power fluctuations, in transference of energies. A lifetime of this meant noticing minute details instantly and cataloguing those details was how his mind worked and so when in the first fifteen minutes since Willow and Loki had entered the trance state he noticed the slight change in the Mind Gem immediately.

"Jarvis compare luminosity of the Mind Gem now to its state fifteen minutes ago."

"Luminosity of the Mind Gem is down by 1.2 percent sir." His AI said, startling Thor and Steve who had yet to get used to the idea of the walls talking to them.

"Interesting."

"How did you even notice it, 1.2 percent shouldn't even be obvious to the human eye." Bruce asked, a vein of admiration to his words.

"It looks the same to me." Barton said frowning.

"When you have glowing arc reactor in your chest you become very aware of light. When the arc reactor runs low on juice it glows less."

Everyone stared at the sceptre and it's glowing centre wondering what to make of it.

"This is going to be a long night," Natasha said, "I'll get us some sleeping bags and we'll camp out here, I don't want to leave them alone like this." She walked off, JARVIS directing her to a supplies cabinet a few floors up.

"Why is it taking so long, Loki didn't use it on many people, once he had me and we got in contact with anti-SHIELD establishments he didn't even need to use it." Clint wondered.

"I saw the footage Birdie, that thing was a big bright blue even when he stepped on Earth."

"It is my brother's memories." Thor said gravely with utter conviction in his voice. "There have been many slights done unto him over the years."

"Yeah but it can't be-"

"We are millennia old, friend Rogers, and Loki has not been very popular among the populace. The Aesir do not take well to having their inadequacies made obvious and my brother was always quick to point out their faults."

"He was bullied?" It was less question and more statement and Steve's shark intake of breath made it obvious that it did not sit well with him.

Thor winced. "Aye he was and I have played no small part in the harm caused to him." He stretched out his hand to pat the comatose Loki on his head but stopped just before his fingers could touch his hair and withdrew his fingers.

"Millennia you said. So presumably centuries of-"

"Tony lets not go there right now." Bruce said with a tremor to his usually calm voice and they saw the skin around his neck go slightly green. "I'm sure we'll have time to talk about this later." He breathed in and out a few times and the green finally receded. "Besides I'm more worried about Willow than Loki."

"What do you mean?" Steve sat up a bit straight.

"She's just a kid. Seems to be pretty happy and well adjusted and she's basically going through Loki's and everyone else's nightmares, their lowest times. What if it breaks her like it did him?"

* * *

In the nothingness in between minds they felt each other's presence and reached for one another, minds bumping together and thoughts briefly exchanged. For a moment he felt light and at peace while she felt intense worry and fear.

"Is it just me or was that surprisingly easy?" She spoke into the dark, shaking the dark thoughts out.

"Erik's obsession with the Tesseract meant that the mind gem didn't need that intense an emotion to control it. He wanted badly to be a part of these going-ons and this was his way to it."

"There's something else t it isn't there?"

"I needed him to make the portal that would bring me to this world so I might have…guided his mind to the right calculations from the Barren Moon." He said reluctantly.

"Wait you can-ARGH!"

The dark had been interrupted by sudden brightness and she was temporarily blinded. IT wasn't the fluorescent light of the lab Selvig was in but a golden one that hurt the eye much more. When her eyes adjusted she was in a golden city.

"Asgard." Loki said reverently, eyes turning misty. "I have…longed to see the Golden City for the past year."

"You know this means it's your turn for therapy right?"

The smile slid off his face. "Of course." He bowed, returning to his home city having restored his princely manners to him. "Shall we?" He led her through a labyrinth of passages and doors.

"Where to?"

"Probably my chambers, it's where I spent most of my childhood and I doubt the Mind Gem got any further than that."

They stopped in front of a set of ornate doors and she dithered while he went to push it open. Instead he went right through the doors and stumbled back out the next minute.

"Since this is, in fact, my memory I have no form here." He said stiffly.

"So you can't-"

"I made an attempt at talking to my younger self, hoping to resolve this on my own. He could not perceive me or even my presence. In there I am the Asgardian equivalent of a seven year old mortal." He said informatively.

She pushed open the door and stepped into young Loki's room and instead of looking around it like she would have liked to, she swept forward to the young god sitting on the edge of his bed nearing tears.

"What's wrong?" She asked.

"It's my birthday." He smiled sadly at her confusion. "Everyone forgot."

"Oh." She sat down next to him and the elder Loki looked around the room carefully, his attempts at picking up knick knacks form the table failing as his hand fell through it all and with a frustrated sound he chose to look at his younger self instead.

It was odd for him to see himself in such a vulnerable state. He hadn't been innocent in a long time and he had become desensitised to such small matters as someone forgetting his birthday over his life. It had become routine for him to be forgotten and fade into the background and was one of the many reasons why no one had ever thought that it was he who had led the frost giants into the vault, he would be surprised if anyone ever figured it out. Sif's hatred of him made her the only possible person who might and even then her disdain for his abilities meant that she would think it beyond his power to walk through worlds.

He was jolted out of his thoughts as Willow spoke.

"I'm sorry they forgot your birthday."

The infantile Loki took a shaky breath. "It's okay, 's not your fault."

She leaned in with all the air of telling him a secret and Loki watched his younger self draw closer, always eager to hear a secret."You know in my family, we don't celebrate birthdays at all."She said softly

"Why not?"

"Well some people in my family are so old they don't remember how old they are and then they start crying." She pouted. "At my fifth birthday my Uncle Oscar, well he's my great uncle actually, he began crying very loudly and everyone was so mortified that we decided no more birthday celebrations."

His eyes widened."You think my parents don't remember how old I am? But they remember how old Thor is."

"They _have_ to remember how old Thor is, I don't think Thor remembers himself, he's been hit in the head so many times." She sighed and shook her head exaggeratedly and younger Loki giggled. "Hey Loki?"

"Yes milady?"

She smiled a most beatific smile that made even Asgard seem to glow brighter and he didn't quite think it possible. "Happy birthday."

Almost immediately the scene changed and the two closed their eyes, now aware of how to deal with the shift in memories. When they felt grass under their feet they opened their eyes and found themselves in a forest.

Loki looked at the trees and frowned. "This is no place on Asgard or any that I have ever seen."

"Oh I remember this." She said softly before nudging Loki. "You're up now."

"What?"

"Well this is my memory so you'll have to deal with it, I won't see me. I mean younger me won't see me." She made a face. "This is confusing."

Loki meanwhile panicked. "What am I supposed to do? What is this place anyway? I thought the Mind Gem couldn't control you?"

"IT can't, this memory isn't strong enough for it to use against me." She looked around inhaling the smell of apples and began walking, Loki following her. "This is where I came to be."

"You can't possibly remember being born." He scoffed and another though presented itself to him, "Why would it be traumatic?"

"Oh no this is isn't me being born, this is me waking up, existing. I don't have parents, I don't know how I…how I came to be but one day I just _was_." She looked at her hands and her toes twitched and she saw them as if they were new. "One day I began existing."

"But _how_ did you exist? How did you come into being?"

"I don't know. If I existed before then I don't remember. Maybe I did but I don't think so. I feel too complete as I am now."

"Didn't you ask?"

"Who would I ask? What would I say, how do I even phrase it? Besides my grandmother, well my adoptive grandmother I suppose, she speaks to the trees too, not exactly like me but still and she said the same thing, one day she woke up and just was. She's pretty old but she doesn't know how she exists either." She looked dazed and fiddled with her hands pressing forwards, ducking and walking in the gaps between trees even as he moved the lower hanging branches out of their way so they wouldn't smack him.

"Alright I'll accept that you just," He rolled his eyes, _"Came into existence _one day but why is this traumatic?"

"IT isn't, it's just the scariest memory I have. I mean sure Natasha screwing with my mind hurt but I already dealt with that when I talked to her afterwards, this is one of those things I can't really….fix. I just woke up and amidst all the sensory overload of seeing, hearing, smelling, _feeling,_ all for the first time, I could also hear the grass under me, the birds and the insects all of them asking me if I was alright. I can appreciate the memory in hindsight but at the moment it was terrifying. IT was too much to take in."

"SO what do I do?" He was terrified.

"You just go over, give me a hug tell me it's okay and if possible just hold me till all the feeling ease off and I'm not overwhelmed anymore." She looked away from him and her face brightened. "Ah, there I am."

At the foot of a massive tree that he didn't recognise, lay a small shivering child, barely two years old. She wore a pale green slip that seemed to be woven of light, not unlike the magic that Willow had used during the battle with the chitauri to bind them and was curled in on herself.

The older version of her pushed him forward and he stumbled, the leaves crunching under his feet loudly. The child straightened up and ran to him and he was almost knocked over by the force with which she barrelled into him. He looked at the older Willow who had a look of amusement on her face and she gestured for him to pull the child closer. His arms came around her slowly and the shivering slowed down as he rubbed her back gently the way his mother had done for him when he was younger and had a nightmare. The tremors stopped entirely and he looked down to see her asleep in his arms.

Just when he got used to holding her though, the scene flickered and they were lost to the darkness again.

"What's going on now?" Willow asked as they were back in Asgard. They began walking again, this time Loki led her to another place, they climbed a spire of the palace higher and higher.

"I do believe that I have been left behind by Thor and his friends while they're off on a quest. Either that or I've just overheard them saying very clearly that they hate me and only tolerate my presence because Thor asked them to." Loki shrugged. "It could also be the time I was called argr for practising seidr."

"…What?"

"I was called unmanly for practising magic." He clarified.

"Loki I don't mean to sound mean but this is all tame isn't it? For you I mean."

"We are only at, as your Midgardian saying goes, the tip of the iceberg. I am only a hundred years old at this point, not even old enough to join in the courtyard for training let alone quests. Being a bit more on the small side my mother coddled me a lot and I was not allowed to train with arms like most children."

"So the really bad part starts-?"

"Much later. We haven't even reached the time I was poisoned or the time I was left in Muspelheim by Thor and his friends and nearly died or the first time I was imprisoned on the Isle of Silence or-"

"Please tell me this happened recently." She stopped to lean against the wall for a few seconds and he raised an eyebrow.

"Not that recently." They continued their ascent.

"And knowing your idea of time I'm guessing you must have been an adolescent at the time this happened?"

"Pre-adolescent, if I understand Midgardian ideas of adolescence correctly."

"Now I'm just plain depressed."

"I'd suggest you get used to it, it's going to get much worse pretty soon."

"Yeah?"

"Yes, this is about the time I became numb to the taunts that were thrown at me, they had to escalate to greater heights to damage me and so they did." He stopped abruptly ignoring her soft curses. "Ah here we are."

"Where?"

"My hideout. This particular tower is restricted to the Royal Family's use."

The stepped out onto a ledge where a young Loki sat, pensive. He looked to be the same age as the last Loki she had helped and his older counterpart helped her out. "It has been twenty years or so since the last memory."

"In Midgard terms?"

"Half a year?" He offered.

She sighed and took a seat next to young Loki. He didn't even look at her too busy staring at the figures in the courtyard flinging swords and shield about.

"What's wrong?"

And again her existence was simply accepted. Loki thought that the memory versions were vaguely aware of the fact that they were trapped in an unending loop or at least that they weren't wholly real.

"The warriors three, they don't like me very much. At all actually."

"How do you know that?"

"I overheard them talking about it. They said if it wasn't for Thor they'd never talk to me." Young Loki sighed. "Maybe if I was more like Thor."

"Why would you want to be like Thor?"

"He's the perfect Aesir. He's tall and blonde and never afraid and so strong."

"What's wrong with being Loki?"

"Being Loki means being alone."

"This above all, to thine own self be true."

"Even if it means being alone?"

"Loki, do you like yourself?"

"Yes. But no one else does."

"No one else matters, no one else is living your life for you."

"But-"

"No buts, I don't ever want to hear you say you want to be more like Thor. I like _Loki_ just fine."

Again the darkness fell over them but instead of the usual space between memories, this place had a more sinister feel to it. Loki knew what this was, it was not unlike the Void but before he could voice it a childish voice rang out around them, shattering the illusion that they were alone.

"Stop stealing my playmates." A little girl appeared out of nowhere and the suddenness led Willow to clutch Loki's hand before dropping it just as quickly. She was dressed in the oddest way, a little golden dress on her, her skin the bright blue of the Mind Gem and the most vitriolic pout Willow had ever seen. "You can't be here!"

"Why not?" Willow asked.

"Because-" The girl stumbled over her words and the glare she levelled at them lessened. "Because no one ever does."

"Well that doesn't mean I can't be here."

"But you're stealing my playmates!" The girl stomped her foot.

"What playmates?"

"The memories." Loki answered her. "That's the Mind Gem."

"Oh." That changed things. "What's your name?" She asked the girl who let out a sob.

"I don't have one." She said sadly crossing her small arms over her chest.

"Do you want one?" The girl looked at her with wonder in her eyes. "We can help you pick one if you want."

"I can have a name?" There was nothing but wonder in her eyes.

"Well I don't see why not." Willow shrugged. "What kind of name would you like?"

For a brief moment the girl's face brightened before it fell again. "Names have to be given."

"You can choose them too. I know someone who changed her name to Charlotte because her real name was a bit…strange and she got teased a lot." The girl remained unconvinced. "I could give you a name."

"You'd do that?!"

"Sure, how about Lucy? You look like a Lucy to me."

"Astrid is a better name." Loki disagreed. Midgardians had strange choice in names. He had wondered them ever since he had fallen to this realm, what kind of name was Clinton Barton?!

Willow disagreed and glared at him. "Elsa."

"Dagny."

"Annoushka."

"Solveig."

"Oh come on, it's like you hate her or something, she is going to be teased if we name her something ridiculous like that!"

"She's all alone; no one is going to tease her." He rolled his eyes.

A sniffle from the girl broke them out of their argument.

"Now look what you did!" Willow accused and swept the girl into a hug. "Oh honey."

"I don't have a name and you're taking all my playmates!" The girl cried.

"I don't think they did a good job of playing with you though, they were so sad."

"But they have to be, Thanos said I have to take their worst from them, it's their punishment."

"Oh forget about Thanos, did you have any fun here with them reliving their worst memories?"

"No." The girl whimpered.

"Then why would you do that?"

"Because Thanos is my only friend."

"What am I then? I'm here, can't I be your friend?"

"But you'll leave! Just like Thanos left and I thought maybe if I kept them all he'd come back." She sobbed.

"Alright, alright then how about this, you can take any memory from me right?"

"Yes."

"Right so, I will leave one of my happy memories here, it's of me at my home with my Grandmother and you can join them, how does that sound?"

"You'd do that?" The girl said eyes wide with hope.

"I'll do that, but you have to let all the others go, you can't keep their worst thoughts okay?"

"You promise?"

"Of course, and I'll even give you a name, how about we name you Erika?"

"That is acceptable." Loki said magnanimously and she raised an eyebrow.

"I was talking to _her_."

"Erika." The Mind gem, newly christened, said her name out loud and smiled. "I like it."

"Good now you'll let everyone go?"

Erika bit her lip but conceded nonetheless. "Okay."

"Right now, how do I give you my memory?"

"You remember it." Erika said as if Willow was being silly and she smiled.

"Silly me."

The darkness melted away and they were soon standing in under the sun on a grassy stretch of land in the middle of which stood a house. IT had warm beige brick walls and a sloping brown tiled roof. Ivy grew over one side of the house and in the back was a little hothouse. The grassy plains stretched out on all sides of them, dotted by a few trees for a distance before forests resumed and Erika looked around her, excited.

"Is this my new home?"

"If you want it to be."

"I do!"

A slightly older version of the child Loki had soothed popped out from behind a nearby tree.

"Hi!" She said to Erika barely noticing the other two

"Hello."

"I'm Willow."

"I'm Erika."

"I like your name."

"Me too!"

"Do you want to meet my Grammy?"

"Yes please." Young Willow grinned, showing off a missing tooth and grabbed Erika by her hand, pulling her toward the house. "Bye!" Erika yelled out to them but doubled back to run to Loki."You need to see this", She said and suddenly they were on the broken Bifrost and Loki was hanging on to the Gungnir.

"I could have done it Father! I could have done it! For you, for all of us!"

"No, Loki." Odin said and Loki looked at him in shock before letting go of the spear that was the only thing anchoring him to the world.

"Loki, no….NO!" Thor cried out but Loki was falling into the abyss, a single tear running down his face.

"What do you know," The present day Loki said in a conversational tone even as his fist clenched at his side. "He didn't toss me in after all."

"What?" Willow said trying hard to grasp the reality of the fact that Loki had just tried to commit suicide.

"Thanos corrupted that memory, I thought Thor tossed me in. It was one of the many reason I chose to invade Midgard. Revenge on something Thor loves."

"Mate, I don't know if anyone's ever told you this but, Odin's kind of a douchebag."

Loki smiled. "No one's ever told me that before. It's mostly just people saying, 'there is a reason to his actions Loki, you must trust in his wisdom'."

"Douchebag. Total douchebag."

And the ground beneath them lurched suddenly. They awoke seconds later at the table in Stark tower, breathing hard and slowly the world came into focus around them.

"Holy shit, it's stopped glowing completely!" Tony exclaimed.

"Watch your language Stark." Steve admonished.

The two who had travelled through the mind gem shook their heads furiously, panting as if they'd run a marathon. Once they had calmed down however, Loki turned to Willow with a curious expression. "What exactly are you?"

Steve and Bruce got up in anger, certain he had said that offensively but looked on confused as she shrugged. "I told you, I don't know what I am. I know who I am though and that's more than what most people can say."

"How old are you?" Loki pressed on, frowning and he knew he'd finally asked the right question when she froze. She let out a shaky breath and answered him, calm but aware of the questions that would soon follow her answer.

"I turn 137 years old this summer."


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: I would have updated sooner but I was in the wilderness with no access to anything electronic and transferring the story from notebooks to the laptop and then editing it was surprisingly arduous. Thank you for all the lovely reviews, faves and follows, I'm glad Willow isn't coming off as a tree hugging Mary-Sue (even though she kind of **_**is**_** a tree hugging Mary-Sue).**

******Disclaimer: I own nothing but Willow.**

* * *

_Green is for chlorophyll_

_by Arasinyah_

_Chapter_ _11_

"You're nearly 150 years old?" Steve exclaimed and Tony cleared his throat to redirect the attention to a different matter.

"Before we get to that, and we will get to that, did it work? The Mind Gem-"

"Erika." Loki and Willow said in unison and she grinned at pointed at him, "Jinx!"

"Lady Willow, I would not suggest setting a curse on my brother."

"I'm not your brother." Loki rolled his eyes.

"And I didn't curse him, it's just a children's game, you say jinx whenever someone says something at the same time as you." Willow explained.

"Who is Erika?"

"She's the Mind Gem."

Steve stepped forward, authoritatively."Tell us everything that happened from the beginning."

"I'll tell you what happened with Erika but not about the memories we went through, those are kind of personal." She darted a glance between Loki and Clint. The archer, well aware of exactly which memory she was talking about, flinched, turning his glare at Loki. "But basically we were just starting to go through Loki's parts and this little girl appears out of nowhere, tells us to stop taking her playmates away from her. We talked and she was lonely so I told her if she let everyone else go I'd leave her one of my happy memories to keep and she's have a friend and we gave her a name and she's all happy now."

"So you just asked her to let all the memories go?" Bruce asked.

"Yeah." She shrugged.

"You asked a sentient mind controlling gem holding deep dark secrets to forget them. And she agreed." Clint said flatly.

She shrugged. "Pretty much."

"I can't believe that worked."

"It often does, people are so hung up on being rejected that they never really ask anymore, just assume the answer is a negative and try something more difficult." She shook her head. "I don't understand them. I always ask."

"Great!" Tony smiled a fake, too wide grin. "So, moving on, apparently you're 150 years old?"

"No I turn 137 years old this summer."

"I thought you didn't celebrate birthdays." Loki smirked.

"We don't, we just have a big party once a year and call it everyone's birthday. But I turn 137 in the summer, remember the orchard?"

"What are you talking about?"

"One of the memories." Willow said. "You kind of had to be there."

"So now what?"

"I take Loki back to Asgard." Thor said stoically and Willow turned on him, an eyebrow raised sceptically.

"To face Asgard's arbitrary idea of justice?"

"The Allfather-"

"Oh I'd like to have some words with your father." Willow pursed her lips. "Maybe have a talk about how to be a parent."

"My father is-"

Huginn and Muninn swept down the night sky and landed on the railing of the bar startling Tony who was in the middle of pouring himself a drink.

"Son of a bitch!"

"Huginn, Muninn do your bring word from father?"

_"The Allfather asks that Lady Willow be present for the trial of Loki Laufeyson."_

Loki flinched but hid it behind a smirk he bestowed upon Thor. 'Call me brother now, I dare you' he seemed to say and Thor clenched his jaw but refused to meet his eye.

"Why is he called Allfather?" Willow asked with a frown

"Milady?"

"Well the King of Asgard, why is he called Allfather?"

"Sentiment."

"Brother, it is no-"

"Literally, sentiment, he isn't actually the father of everyone if that is what you think." Loki said quickly ignoring Thor.

"I _had_ wondered, because the mythology says something like that which seems...icky."

"It is because he is wise and all knowing and treats all like his own child, ruling with the gentle hand of a father." Thor said in a booming voice but his audience was unmoved.

"You got exiled to Earth because you nearly started a war with Jotunheim." Willow said with a quizzical eyebrow.

"Yes." Thor admitted and Steve and Bruce frowned.

"And Loki tried to do the same before trying to off himself by jumping into a void." It was now Tony's turn to pull a face.

For the most part they stayed quiet, knowing full well that there were chunks of the story that they were missing out on. Even before Willow had travelled through the Mind Gem with Loki she had known the most about them having spoken with Huginn and Munnin at length while at the helicarrier.

"I remember." Loki said through gritted teeth.

"Just saying that maybe that title needs to be changed because as a father, he's not exactly been doing very well. If this is his idea of parenting then it's an epic fail."

"Will you attend the trial Lady Willow?" Thor asked in an attempt to change the subject.

"Why would I want to do that?" Willow said sweetly and leaned back against the chair. "Of course there is the question of how you'll be getting back, I presume you'll be using the Tesseract?"

Thor nodded.

"And you have it prepped for that use do you? You know what device is needed to open up a portal to Asgard?"

"Father has sent with me the plans for the device that needs to be created. I had hopes that Man of Iron would provide some assistance? I am not the best of creators and-"

"Don't needle the Tesseract too much." Loki said. "She doesn't like it."

"_You_ know the Tesseract?" Tony said, sceptical, and Loki gritted his teeth.

"I have an affinity for her type of power, she is a door between worlds and I often tread the space between the branches of Yggdrasil."

"…What?"

"He teleports, he gets space travel." Willow wondered if her status on the team was just as a translator.

"But you do too." Bruce pointed out.

"Yeah but only on Earth, I'm very limited in how far and where I can go, the first time I tried to get to someplace I didn't know, I ended up over an ocean! Luckily there was a whale there and he gave me a lift to the nearest harbour. This guys goes from one realm to another easily."

"So 137 years? Really?" Steve asked, turning the attention back to her and she nodded. "Then what was all that about when you asked me what it was like growing up in the twenties?" He sounded greatly offended. "Were you just trying to get to-"

"Why is that your default setting? Every time someone tries to put you at ease you assume it's so that they can use you. You both said the same thing on the helicarrier once you found out about my empathy." She accused Bruce and Steve. "It's very annoying that you're suspicious of me and not S.H.I.E.L.D. but I suppose I should expect that, Steve's a soldier and he kind of likes having someone give him orders that he can follow and Bruce hates everyone but the Hulk is the emotional part of him and anyone with the ability to mess with that part is automatically a threat. Still, very annoying especially when I've done nothing to earn the suspicion."

They both had the grace to look abashed and muttered a soft apology.

"And for your information, I wasn't allowed off the estate until I turned a hundred. I aged slower than most people and my grandmother didn't want me going out until I at least looked like an adult even though I didn't act like one." She rolled her eyes.

"A hundred years in near isolation like that?" Tony said in disbelief. "Didn't you get bored?"

"Not really, the estate is huge, really huge, we even have a lake, a big one. The trees are old and they tell me stories of what they'd seen, I learnt about wars and skirmishes, even the odd love stories and the birds told me about the outside world and how it changed. I thought it was a fairytale for the longest time, that there wasn't actually anything behind the wall but then I went out into the world and…yeah."

"What did you do all these years?"

"At first I just roamed around, figuring out how everything worked and then I got into the swing of things but I 'roamed' into Lebanon which was going through its civil war. Helped out with that but eventually I had to leave there. Then I ended up in Vietnam which was dealing with the end of their war and I helped out with that. The pattern repeated itself. But as of late I've mainly been in Australia."

"Why?"

"Well I hadn't been there before and when I landed there I found out about the kangaroo. I just think they're _fascinating_." She looked off with a curious expression on her face. "You guys have no idea how much you're missing out on by not being able to talk to them, they are amazing, so, so amazing."

"You just spent the last five minutes talking about kangaroos." Tony deadpanned.

"They're worth it." She said seriously.

"So you really talk to trees?"

"I talk to everything, the grass, birds, trees, anything sentient or even semi-sentient really. I mean your houseplants have been giving me a rundown on their life with you ever since I got here."

"I have houseplants?!" Tony turned to where her thumb was pointed in surprise. They rustled despite the lack of a wind and Willow laughed.

"They say someone named Rhodey and Pepper made a bet to see how long it would take you to notice them. Apparently Pepper is going to win, she said you wouldn't notice them until something in the tower exploded. I don't think she expected the explosions to be from a battle with aliens though."

Tony spluttered.

"You…They really talk to you, don't they?"

"Well yeah, I just said that." She rolled her eyes.

"It's kind of hard to believe."

"Harder than the magic he does?" She pointed at Loki. "Harder than his magical hammer that only allows the worthy, an arbitrary and subjective state, to pick it up?" She pointed at Thor. "Harder than the alien army that you just fought? Harder than the super soldier or the scientist who goes a bit green and gigantic?"

"When you put it like that-"

"It is still harder to believe." Loki contributed to their conversation. "For one thing your very existence is unprecedented, you say that you just _came to be_. For the rest of us there is a certain basis of comparison that can be used, genetic mutations for the super soldier and the beast, different alien species from other realms for Thor and I but there is no such measure for you. In this set of wildcards, you are the wildest." He said calmly.

"You make it sound so terrible."

"It's not terrible but it is certainly strange. And given that the paradigm we are engaged in is strange to begin with that is not a good thing. In all my studies I have never come across such a case as yours and given the far reaching extent of my studies, that is odd."

"Studies?" Tony looked at Loki quizzically but Thor answered him.

"My brother is a well versed scholar, Man of Iron."

"I'm not your brother and you certainly weren't so proud of my studies when I was actually engaging in them. " Loki said pointedly and Thor looked to the ground gravely.

"Oh crud, he's going to go all emo on us again." Willow complained to Tony.

Luckily they were spared what would have inevitably been another round of Thor trying to ask Loki where he went wrong as his brother while Loki vehemently repeated that he was not his brother when Natasha came into the room dragging a large set of sleeping bags with her.

"What the hell?" The red head said looking at the two who were supposed to be in the Mind Gem in shock.

"What?"

"I dragged these sleeping bags all the way here for nothing?"

"Well not really, I mean I don't think any one of you is going to let Loki be alone."

"We can't leave Loki alone, I mean he may have been messed up in his head but that doesn't mean we just let him go." Clint backed Natasha up.

"I can keep an eye on my brother." Thor said and the rest broke off into various amused snorts and smirks.

"That's not going to happen Point Break, we all know that Reindeer Games has to just make puppy eyes at you and you're a goner."

"Puppy eyes?" Loki frowned, confused.

"Pout cutely." Willow clarified and the confusion changed to utter outrage.

"Cute?! Pout?!" Loki was indignant.

"You do have big anime eyes." Tony closed in to look at Loki and the god leaned away, mouth screwed up in distaste.

_"Do you accept the Allfather's request?"_ The ravens chorused and she frowned.

"Not until I get more information on the nature of the trial and my role in it specifically, I'm not going to another world without knowing why."

_"We do not know your role in the trial."_

"Couldn't you ask?"

_"We could."_

"Will you ask? Because unless I know everything, I'm not letting him out of sight, certainly not to let him go to _Asgard_." She snorted.

"You are not fond of the Golden Realm, Lady Willow?" Thor asked, wounded by her distrust in his homeland.

"It's doesn't impress me much."

"But why-"

"You're asking a pacifist why she isn't fond of a warrior society." Loki commented wryly. "Might as well ask the Jotunn why they aren't fond of Muspelheim."

"I see."

"Do you?" Loki asked a gleam to his eyes. "Do you really? Allow me to elaborate, she doesn't like killing things, cannot stand the very thought of it so think hard and fast about why exactly she doesn't like Asgard where all everyone ever does is go on quests to kill things."

"All things considered, we really shouldn't be surprised that he tried to take over Earth." Willow said conversationally and Clint snorted in response.

"Doesn't make it okay."

"No but someone from S.H.I.E.L.D. passing judgement on what is or isn't okay is hypocritical and makes me laugh." Willow looked around the room with a raised eyebrow. "Bruce you used animals in your experiments when you tried to replicate the serum. But that was okay with you because they were lesser beings wasn't it, but wait that's what Loki said about you all when he tried to conquer Earth. Steve you're a soldier, you fought in war that you never wanted, never started yet you failed to think that maybe that was the case for the soldiers you killed too. Tony was known as the Merchant of Death for the longest time, I don't really need to elaborate why and Clint and Natasha, well I've read your files. You know why you're not the right people to judge. And Thor thinks of us as beneath him too, I can feel his amusement when he talks to us."

"Tiny, petty humans." Tony repeated.

"All in all none of you really get to say shit about Loki. Only I do honestly." She turned to him and punched him on his arm lightly. He didn't even flinch but she did. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have hit you."

"Oh yes, you'll fit right in with Asgard." Loki drawled sarcastically.

"So will you ask?" She repeated to the raven and with a bob of their heads they flew off. "Was that a yes or a no?" She asked the two Asgardians.

"Will you truly not come to the trial?" Thor almost pleaded and she sighed.

"Look, how long will it take to build whatever that thing is that your Dad sent the plans for?"

"I don't-"

"Two days at the very least." Loki interrupted.

"Great so you have these two days to explain the Asgardian system of 'justice' to me and then I'll make my decision."

"I insist that you come with us Lady Willow." Thor said imposingly puffing to his full height and trying to look intimidating. It might have worked if it wasn't for the fact that Willow wasn't even looking at him, far too busy looking out the window.

"Thor don't make me lift Mjolnir off his foot and take your prisoner away from you because I will keep Mjolnir just to be annoying and you will not like that." She said before giggling.

"What is going on?" Tony asked confused.

"There's a pigeon outside planning his attack on a group of kids, he wants the chips they have. It's a terrible plan and he's _narrating it_!" She laughed harder and Thor sulked. "Like some terrible comic book villain."

"There's a surplus of those going around."

Loki glared at Tony, clearly offended before schooling his face into a look of indifference.

"We should probably get some sleep now." Willow said diffusing the tension. "And Tony probably wants to say goodnight to Pepper-"

Tony's eyes widened and he let out a volley of curses. "I forgot to call Pepper! Oh crap she's going to kill me-"

He ran off and they were left in amused silence.

"We should set up shifts." Natasha said even as she rolled out a sleeping bag. "Someone needs to keep an eye on him." She lifted her chin in Loki's direction.

"You want to watch me sleep?" Loki said sceptically.

"A bit too Twilight-ish isn't it?" Willow's mouth curled in distaste. "Creepy. Besides, JARVIS can keep an eye on him can't he?"

"I shall engage Wake Up Protocol 12.6 if Mr Laufeyson tries to escape." JARVIS announced.

Natasha shivered, apparently familiar with Wake Up protocol 12.6 before looking over Loki. "He's a war criminal, Fury wanted him in secure holding but we don't have a cell for him anymore." She was reluctant to let someone else do her surveillance job for her but had also been up for almost 48 hours straight with most of those hours spent fighting and everyone else was in a state not unlike her own so she gave in.

"You mean a cell for me." Bruce said with a smile and Natasha shrugged.

"It wouldn't have held me anyway." Loki leaned back with a sigh and yawned. The action was contagious and slowly the inhabitants of the room succumbed to the need to sleep. By the time Tony returned from his call all the lights in the room had been shut off and an array of snoring sounds filled the room.

Wedged in a sleeping bag between Willow and Thor Loki, stayed awake. It reminded him of the many quests he'd been on with Thor and his friends especially when Thor stretched out his arm and smacked him in the nose with it.

He was tired. So, so tired but he could not sleep, not now that the snores had died down far enough so he couldn't hear them as much, when the lights were off and in the city even the stars weren't visible. Not now when he was reminded far too much of the void even as Thor's warmth steeped through the thin layers between them.

On his other side Willow shifted uneasily. She had been tossing and turning for quite a while now and a part of him was enjoying the fact that he wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep. When she threw off the covers and sat up with a loud sigh his smile grew and when she made another one of those starry lights in between her hand he sagged in relief.

"Can't sleep?" He asked, his voice low even as he smoothly got up and not a soul stirred even as Thor sighed and slept a bit deeper at the sound of Loki's voice.

"It's too quiet. And high up and metallic and all the other things I can't stand." She pouted. "What about you?"

A frisson of fear ran through him even as he smiled, sickly. "The sheets are too scratchy." He tried to say in his most high and mighty voice but instead it came off as petulant and he cringed.

"Oh, I thought it might have been because of the Void you fell into but-"

"How did you know?" He hissed.

"I didn't. I guessed because when I close my eyes I see you falling into it and that is not fun at all and is also in fact one of the reasons I can't sleep."

Concern, for _him_ even though he'd tried to take over her world and sent her plunging through the sky in a steel cage, humans (well she wasn't quite human though, not quite a mortal either, simply a Midgardian) never failed to surprise him in their infinite capacity to feel.

"It wasn't fun living it either."

"What was The Void like?" She asked softly but he flinched like she had struck him with a white hot poker and she muttered an apology. They went back to staring at the world outside in almost silence, the only sound that of his suddenly heavy breaths and she curled up, berating herself.

"At first," He didn't look at her, every muscle taut and knowing his injuries she knew that must hurt. His voice came out scratchy and heavy and she mentally berated herself for asking the question. "At first it was terrifying. Nothingness all around, and to fall from Asgard which at its most dull is still _so_ bright to a vacuum was…overwhelming."

"Sensory deprivation."

"Yes but after a while, I don't quite know how long, time has no meaning in the void but eventually I got used to it. It was almost peaceful, like sleeping for a long time, no nightmares , no dreams or thoughts just peace. When Thanos plucked me out of the Void I had forgotten how to think, to speak to exist. But I had also forgotten what it was like to feel pain, regret and all those other lovely things and they reminded me of it all. They..taught me how to speak again, I remembered everything eventually although how much of it was real and how much was warped by Thanos, I do not know." He frowned.

"Erika would have told you if he did though."

"I suppose."

"So what does Odin really want from me?"

"Maybe he just wants you to testify against me in the trial."

"Somehow I doubt it."

He smirked. "And why is that?"

"Well I would never testify against you, if anything I would to speak about your state of mind and get a lesser punishment for you which is what a father might want but-"

"But this is the trial of Loki Laufeyson not Loki Odinson." He finished for her.

"Exactly. So why am I really invited to Asgard?"

"Curiosity probably. A Midgardian who is not a mortal and has no idea of how she exists is an anomaly. Like I said before you're a wildcard and Odin is bad at improvising, he probably wants to know more about you."

"Sounds like S.H.I.E.L.D. I don't like S.H.I.E.L.D." She pouted. "But S.H.I.E.L.D. is scared of me. What would it take to make Asgard scared of me?"

He snorted. "A lot. Although maybe not as much as I think, your methods of scaring people are not the same as mine are they?"

"Probably. So should I go to Asgard for your trial?"

He was surprised that she was asking him for advice but didn't show it. She wouldn't have noticed any way, too busy biting her lip with a frown and he was glad for it.

"Won't do any harm. And maybe you could terrify Asgard while you're at it."

A slow mischievous grin took form on her face and was reflected on his own. "That could be fun."


	12. Chapter 12

******Disclaimer: I own nothing but Willow.**

* * *

_Green is for chlorophyll_

_by Arasinyah_

_Chapter_ _12_

Within minutes of Willow leaving the tower the next morning, Fury and his gang had come by to collect Loki. They had fitted him with the shackles and muzzle that Odin had sent the designs for, keeping him from using his magic and ferried him off with a brief talk with the Avengers. He was supposed to be held in a backup version of the Hulk's cage, a statement that earned Banner some cautious looks from the agents accompanying Fury. After a snide yet calm comment on how Loki owed him rent money by now Bruce passed Fury by with nary a second glance, more interested in Tony's labs that in furthering his grudge and Loki was impressed by his self control.

Thor had been apologetic but unable to stop them from taking his brother away since he still needed their help in creating the device to open the portal to Asgard and Clint and Natasha had been ordered to report within three hours once they'd done a check on the damage done to the tower which everyone there knew was more a ploy to find out more about Stark's technology than anything else, even Stark himself.

If Loki were honest with himself though he was glad to be taken away to a secure facility. When the Chitauri came for him like he knew they would, the cage would serve as a better deterrent than the Avengers who were still not fond of him, despite knowing now that he had been under Thanos' influence.

He could only wonder though, why all of this was done when Willow was absent. Were they really that scared of her?

Bound and muzzled like this, the only real thing he could do though was wait.

Pity then, that patience was one of the many virtues he had lost.

* * *

"Hey, where's Loki?"

Willow had been out for the past two hours putting up her usual magic show in Central Park and when she returned the tower had been devoid of Thor's brother and everyone was doing their best to avoid her. The very second she had stepped off the elevator Clint and Natasha had stepped into it and left in a hurry, Bruce and Tony had made excuses locked themselves in the lab with Thor so they could make the device that would open the portal to Asgard and Steve had been nowhere to see as well, ducking into the gym when he saw her coming even though he had just returned from it.

She was quite suddenly all alone in the Tower and she sat down on the couch with a sigh, rolling their eyes.

"JARVIS could you please tell me where Loki is?"

"Director Fury and thirteen agents escorted him from the tower approximately four minutes after you left, Miss Willow." The AI said.

"Did he mention where he took him?"

"I am under strict orders not to tell you of his location Ma'am."

"It isn't necessary, there's only one S.H.I.E.L.D. base they could have taken him to anyway."

Within minutes she walked down the hallway of a certain subterranean facility and found Fury.

"Hey Nick, I'm going to pop in and talk to Loki." She said brightly, interrupting him in the middle of his meeting and he was forced to leave the conference room to follow her.

"You can't-"

"Nick we both know what happened the last time you told me what I can't do." She said in a sing song voice.

"Please don't do this." He asked resignedly.

"You waited the exact moment until I was out of the tower to take him. You know if you don't want me as your enemy, you should really stop making it personal." She said conversationally, walking down the halls even as he kept up with her unhurried pace.

"We had to, you wouldn't have let us take him."

"Well what made you think I'd let you keep him then?"

Fury sighed. "You can talk to him just don't take him out of here alright? You'll have full access to him but we can't let you keep him in the middle of the city anymore, it's not safe."

"Well it's not safe to have S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in the city too but I don't see you pulling your agents out of that Wendy's that you think is a front for an arms dealership."

"How did you- Never mind, just please don't-"

"Nick, for now I'll let you keep him but if I want him out of here, I'll take him out of here and there is nothing, absolutely nothing you can do to stop me so you really shouldn't try. We wouldn't want a repeat of the New Orleans incident now would we?"

Fury paled but didn't say anything and with a blinding smile she flounced off.

She was soon standing in front of the heavy steel door she knew led to the only other Hulk-proof cage S.H.I.E.L.D. owned. It was still under construction according to the files she'd read but they'd managed to accelerate their speed to get one ready by working hard through the night.

She'd only just entered the room and taken off Loki's muzzle when she was interrupted.

"Ma'am you aren't supposed to talk to the prisoner or remove his muzzle." A stoic S.H.I.E.L.D. agent said as Loki coughed, running his tongue over his dry mouth. Willow smiled a slow, sweet smile and the lightest of tremors ran through the agent. Loki watched in fascination as she lifted her arm and the agent flinched even as she simply ran it over her head, pulling her hair to the side casually in an obvious feint.

"I'd like to see you try and stop me." She said casually. "Fury doesn't seem to mind."

"I'm afraid I answer only to the World Security Council."

"Oh how nice, when you tell them about this would you mind asking Angela about her granddaughter? I know Marissa was sad about her parents splitting up and her Dad moving to New York, you know, the city that Angela ordered the nuclear strike on."

"That was a tactical-"

"I haven't visited Marissa in a long time though and I do have _so_ many stories to tell her especially about my recent adventures with S.H.I.E.L.D. and her grandmother." The agent paled and swallowed hard as she looked at him through lowered lashes. "It'll be fun to catch up. Maybe I can visit Angela later too." She said absentmindedly before giggling. "Don't mind me, I'm just thinking out loud. You probably have a council to notify, don't you?"

"Yes." The agent walked off, his suit showing sweat stains that hadn't been there a few seconds ago and Loki clapped as much as the shackles allowed him to.

"That was a great performance."

"Thank you, S.H.I.E.L.D. is particularly fun to play with; did you know that there's a rumour going around that I'm a cannibal?"

He pretended to think it over."I've never actually seen you eat."

"No one has, that's why there are these rumours." She leaned in closer lowering her voice to a bare whisper. "They say that the only ones who've seen me eat were the ones I was eating." She sang the last word before giggling.

"Really now?"

"Course it's just silly, all these S.H.I.E.L.D. agents work out far too much, they wouldn't be fun to eat at all, rather stringy and tough honestly."

"True, I'm sure if Midgardians tasted any good, Asgard would go on quests to hunt them down all the time with Volstagg leading them."

"Volstagg?"

"A friend of Thor's, he is fond of food."

"It's such a voluminous name. Volstagg." She tested it out curling her tongue around the syllables.

Loki narrowed his eyes at her when she shot a look at the cameras surrounding them and smirked as no agents swarmed the cell even though she was freeing him. "So," She started after a few seconds of silence while she fiddled with his handcuffs before managing to take them off. "How have they been treating you?"

He smiled, amused, rubbing his wrists. "Were you actually worried about me?"

"Duh." She rolled her eyes.

It took a few seconds for him to realise it was the equivalent of a 'yes' and he was surprised although he shouldn't really have been. She worried about everyone he was hardly an exception to this. Still, he appreciated the concern.

"It's only been a few hours; they didn't really have the time to concoct any tortures for me before you came in."

"They have a handbook for torture actually so they don't really need to concoct any special tortures for you."

"You forget, I'm an Asgardian." He was smug in the knowledge that the Midgardians had no idea how to break him truly but she smiled knowingly in return.

"You forget, they have experience with the Hulk."

He nodded in admittance to the fact. "I suppose your concern isn't misplaced then."

"I don't trust S.H.I.E.L.D. so I'm not leaving you here."

"Will you be accompanying us to Asgard then?"

"I still have time for that decision."

"Thor hasn't tried to convince you?"

"He ran off when he saw me because I asked where you were." She smiled knowingly. "Besides, Huginn and Muninn haven't brought an answer back; I still don't know why Odin wants me there."

"But you're considering going either way."

"We'll see, I'll have to talk to my grandmother about it but that would mean leaving you alone for probably more than a few hours at a time and that's not going to happen." She frowned.

"I can handle S.H.I.E.L.D. besides, I doubt Thor would be very happy if they took things into their own hands."

"Well then when Thor is here to chaperone, I'll leave but that won't make much of a difference. They're scared of me; they're not scared of Thor."

"They will be when he uses his Mjolnir on them. It is not advisable to make an enemy of Thor." He said wryly. "His newfound maturity will be shaken in the face of such blatant disrespect for Asgard's rights to my being."

"Yes well, given that the Chitauri were just defeated I'm guessing the World Security Council is feeling quite confident about their ability to deal with aliens. Which is stupid of course because the Chitauri aren't the same as Thor but I wouldn't put this kind of stupidity past them."

"They made an attempt to level out the whole city didn't they? I didn't think they had it in them, Midgardians have long been known on Asgard for their soft hearts."He thought it over. "Then again, they have also been known for their crude ways of life and yet I see they have aspired to great heights. Perhaps Asgard's perceptions of Midgard need to be reworked."

She laughed."Probably."

"Umm Willow?" A voice interrupted their chat and she practically leapt to embrace the man who stepped in while Loki raised an eyebrow.

"Trevor, what are you doing up, you could barely breathe when I saw you last time!"

"Oh they fixed me up." The agent said with a tight smile, keeping an eye on Loki all the while even as Willow checked him over, poking and prodding at his ribs settling down once she only got a slight flinch out of the man. "We just got a call from Stark Towers, they need you there."

"Why?"

"Apparently it's something related to the machine they're making for the Tesseract, I don't really know. It's above my pay grade but they said that Thor's on his way here."

"I'll leave when Thor gets here." Willow nodded softly and the agent left, Loki followed his movements with his eyes.

"You weren't jesting when you said you were worried."

"Loki, stay on your guard," She looked at him with fear in her eyes and he frowned, "You're a prisoner of war here, a very public war that you were the figurehead of. Even I can't predict what S.H.I.E.L.D. might do with you."

He settled back in his chair wondering exactly how to explain to her that she might not understand but he did, this was not the first time he had been held captive by an enemy, not even the hundredth time. Before he could do anything of the sort though, Thor entered the cage, Mjolnir at his waist. He had on his face such a look of sorrow that he just knew that they would have another one of their talks that always seemed to begin with an exclamation of 'Brother!'

"Brother!" Thor began and for once Loki forgot to reprimand him, so amused was he at Thor's predictability and Willow stepped back, the fear quickly masked by a big smile.

"I'll leave you two to it then." She said and disappeared with a crack, the smell of sunlight following in her wake.

"I have heard a great many disturbing things about our life from Erika." Thor said gravely and Loki settled in for the long talk that would follow. He wondered how far into his speech Thor would realise that he had already forgiven him.

* * *

"S.H.I.E.L.D. is getting smarter." Was the first Willow said as she popped into Stark tower to find Clint Natasha, Tony and Bruce congregated around the kitchen.

"Why do you say that?" The redhead said.

"Well they sent Trevor to talk to me, he isn't scared of me and I actually like him. Plus they made sure to send Thor over, clearly listening in."

Bruce smiled. "Hate to burst your bubble but Thor just wanted to talk to his brother alone but he didn't know if he should take the muzzle off. Of course then you did that anyway."

"You were watching?"

"Of course we were watching." Clint said agitatedly pacing the room. "Look I get that he was under some weird mind control thing but the guy killed Coulson alright, I don't get how you can be so lovey-dovey with him."

"Did you see Coulson's body?" She asked calmly.

"What?"

"Well I have learnt in my past experiences with S.H.I.E.L.D. that unless you see the corpse you do not accept anyone's death. And once you do see the corpse, check for barbiturates and any other chemicals that S.H.I.E.L.D. is developing that might imitate death."

"You really think he isn't dead?"

"I don't know if he is or isn't but I don't trust Fury to ever say the truth to me. It's that simple." She shook her head as if to bash the thoughts out of it. "So what do you need me to do? Trevor said that it was something to do with the portal machine you're building."

Tony and Bruce exchanged a look and the billionaire spoke first, taking the reins. "We didn't actually need you here for anything. Thor just wanted you out of there."

"You know how we're still running tests on the Tesseract and the Mind Gem to see if they're connected?"

"Yeah."

"Well did you know that the Mind Gem, Erika, can actually project a relatively corporeal form of herself outside the gem?" Tony said excitedly.

"No, did she do that?"

Tony answered. "We were just going over some of the data when this little blue girl appeared out of nowhere and said she wanted to talk to Thor, they went off in a corner and I don't know what she said but he took off like a bullet after that."

"You weren't listening in?" She said sceptically and he didn't even look ashamed, just waved his hands around dramatically.

"Of course I was listening but they weren't talking in English, it's no language that JARVIS knows and JARVIS is programmed with every language on Earth."

"I'd say it's an ancient version of Proto-Norse actually." Bruce nodded. "Some of the syllables sound familiar."

"You know Proto-Norse?" Natasha said slowly.

"Well I...you learn to listen for the differences in languages when you're on the run in a different country. Plus one of my former colleagues was obsessed with Indo-European mythology."

"I love you." Tony said directing a worshipping look at Bruce that had the Hulk's counterpart blushing hard.

"Did she say anything to you?"

"Not really. Maybe she'll talk to you?"

"Worth a try." With that they left the two assassins in the kitchen and to the labs.

As soon as they stepped in through the doors they were taken aback to see Erika on the counter of the long tables which held various apparatuses, swinging her legs childishly. She brightened when she saw Willow and burst into a cheek splitting grin.

"Hi!"

"Hello lovey, and what are you up to on this fine day?" Willow cooed.

"Playing Hide and Seek." Erika said cheekily.

"And you're hiding here?"

She nodded even as Bruce and Tony watched curiously, unsure if they should come any further. Willow disregarded any such thoughts and brushing some of the papers on the table aside sat down next to Erika and began swinging her legs in tandem.

"That's not very fair is it?"

"We never said it had to be fair."

"Liking it then?" Willow asked cheerfully.

"I love it! I like you, the you that's in your memory. I like your Grammy too."

"She _is_ very likeable."

"But you fall over a lot."

Bruce jerked his head towards a screen nearby and Tony followed, the two scientists proceeded to acquire new data on the gamma readings when Erika was actually outside of the gem. The two girls however ignored them almost completely.

"That's actually because sometimes the plants get a bit too excited and want me to stay. The grass sometimes wraps itself around my ankle to stop me from going away."

"Really?" Came three voices and Willow swivelled her head to look at the scientists pulling her legs up onto the desk to sit cross legged.

"Really, there are some places where I cannot go anymore because the wildlife there is painfully possessive. Latveria for instance, I don't know what exactly is going on there but the flora and fauna there are so traumatised I was nearly choked in their enthusiasm to keep me there. The same thing happened in some places in the bayou and quite a few places in Europe. It's usually localised but there it is."

"Do you know why that happens?" Bruce pushed his glasses up his nose.

"I have a theory that it's because something particularly horrifying took place there. Some of these places were the sites of genocide; some were of particularly malicious witch burnings and so on and so forth. It might be why they want to keep me around."

"Would you mind demonstra-"

"Yes I would mind." She answered quickly and turned back to Erika. "And you, my dear, are playing a particularly unfair game of Hide and Seek."

Erika pouted before narrowing her eyes. "So are you going to Asgard then?"

"How did you know?" Erika smiled innocently and Willow sighed."Thor told you didn't he?"

"He asked if there was a reason why you didn't want to go there and if I could help him convince you otherwise, given my insight."

"And did you tell him why I didn't want to go there?"

"In explicit detail."

"I'm guessing this is why he went to talk to Loki."

"That is part of the reason yes. The other is because he really does love his brother even though he doesn't quite trust him." She looked at Willow thoughtfully. "You should talk to your grandmother about this."

"I was planning on it." Willow admitted.

"She probably has a lot to tell you. She's a wise woman." Erika nodded. "Thor's going to be talking to his brother for hours, you'd best go now."

Before Willow could respond the form shimmered and then disappeared into the sceptre, Bruce and Tony looking at it in awe.

"My mind hurts." Tony complained. "I mean seriously? Magic?"

"The hell do you think I do?!" Willow laughed.

"You really won't let us try to figure your abilities?" Bruce said softly. "It wouldn't be any invasive tests just-"

"I made it a policy not to let anyone even slightly affiliated with S.H.I.E.L.D. run any experiments on me." They were surprised by how resolute she was in her decision. For the most part they had always seen her as being soft and yielding, even when she vocalised her dislike for S.H.I.E.L.D. it never seemed to be the kind of cocktail of hate and fear that Bruce held for them. "You don't know them like I do."

"How long have you known about them? I mean I didn't even know until I built the Iron Man suit."

"Ten years, give or take."

Tony whistled. "Ten years?! And all they have on you is that you do magic tricks?"

"They lost the little bit of information they had on me a few years ago and since then I have learnt to be more careful." She said with a tight smile. "DO you guys mind me leaving you for a bit?"

"You're coming back though, right?"

"Of course I am. I'll probably be back in an hour or so." She smiled and looked up to the ceiling. "JARVIS?"

"Yes Miss Willow?"

"Would you mind keeping an eye on Thor and Loki?"

"Of course."

With a crack she vanished leaving two disgruntled scientists behind.

"How does she do that?!" Tony said to the empty air where she once stood. "JARVIS I want all the readings from her disappearance, thermal imaging, radiation levels, the works."

"Can he really do that?" Bruce asked.

"The whole place is fitted with sensors, I don't see why not." Tony shrugged.

"Do you get the feeling that she's not too happy to be here?"

Tony stared at Bruce in disbelief. "She's the happiest person I've met in years."

"Yeah I don't mean compared to us. She's just been a bit quiet."

Tony shrugged and went back to poring over the blueprints of the device Thor wanted them to build. "I'm not surprised; she was quiet on the helicarrier too. She just watched us most of the time, it's all the talking she's doing that's really weird."

"You think so?"

"She never starts a conversation unless it's tense, have you noticed? Otherwise she just responds. I think it's to do with her empathy."

"How?"

"Well she feels it right? So if things are tense, so she resolves it so she doesn't have to feel it but if it isn't then she doesn't do much."

"Fury's scared of her." Bruce said gravely and Tony looked up to meet his eyes. "Should we be?"

"And that," Tony grinned, "Is the billion dollar question."


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: There's not a lot of Willow in this chapter which I actually think is a good thing. **

******Disclaimer: I own nothing but Willow.**

* * *

_Green is for chlorophyll_

_by Arasinyah_

_Chapter_ _13_

"What is it now?" Loki said silkily as his brother stood in front of him in silence, a grave expression on his face.

He had been expecting this sort of a talk from Thor sooner or later, could see exactly how it would play out. Thor would ask him where they went wrong, Loki would snarl and say everywhere, remind him of his faults, indulge in some self loathing and then promptly disown Asgard. Thor would then remind him of better times and of mother, he would say 'She's not my mother' and then Thor would storm out, angered by his insolence.

Very predictable.

"Brother," Thor started again and reconsidered his choice of words. "Loki, what exactly happened on Asgard when I was banished?"

Well perhaps not that predictable after all.

"You have not been told the tale of my treachery from your friends and _family_?" Loki was struggling to get his words right, he needed to anger Thor to buy him some time to sort it out. This was not how the script went.

He could see Thor begin to protest, could hear him think 'But you are also my family' but he didn't voice it and simply swallowed. Loki was forced to consider then that perhaps Midgard _had_ changed Thor after all.

It was a bitter pill to swallow. That this tiny little world had managed to do in two days what he had spent the best part of a thousand years trying to do, left an acrid taste in his mouth. Still, defeat was something he was getting increasingly familiar with.

"I would like," Thor began tentatively, "To hear what you have to say on how things unfolded."

"And if, no, _when_ I lie Odinson? What then?"

"Then I will accept your testimony as I have accepted the others'."

"Sentiment."

"You always said I was a fool." Thor said with a shrug before smiling dryly. "In that, at least, you never lied."

Loki felt trapped. He had been put into shackles and a muzzle and thrown into a cell and felt right at home in all of those and only now that Thor gave him full reign to lie did he feel trapped. That mind doctor that Fury had said he would send later would have a ball with him.

"Where should I start?"

"Did you let the frost giants into Asgard on my coronation day?"

"Yes."

Thor sat back, grave. "Two brave lives were lost that day."

"Not really brave." Loki shrugged.

"You would slander the dead?! Alver and Bassi, who have forever been kind to us, even when we snuck in to the armoury when it is forbidden?"

Loki snorted. "Alver and Bassi weren't guarding the armoury that day."

"Then who-"

"Geirr and Rekkr." Loki said smugly before the smile dropped. "It's been a year and you didn't bother to check who was guarding the armoury? Don't tell me, you were too busy 'mourning my death'." He drawled out and Thor blushed red.

"How did you do that? Geirr and Rekkr had been banned from even entering the palace since-"

"Since they were found harassing the palace maids, I know. It was far too easy honestly. All I had to do was impersonate them and profess 'true remorse' to one of the councilmen and they were allowed in."

"I'll have father look into that, we cannot have our councilmen so lax."

"Ah but then how would the councilmen make the money they are so fond of gambling away."

"They made money off this?!" Thor was outraged.

"If you intend on being a good king Thor, I suggest you take a harder look at the council and perhaps some more time in court than on quests."

"The longer I stay on Midgard the more I realise that I Should never have gotten close to a coronation at all."

"A thought we both share."

"And after I was banished, what then?" Loki stiffened and Thor smiled. "Come now brother, where is that Silvertongue now?"

Loki glared at him. "This is no tale to be woven Odinson, this is my life laid bare. No Silvertongue can make it sound more or less than it is. "

Only when Thor looked sufficiently chastised did he begin. Loki clenched his eyes shut, struggling for the right words.

"When we were on Jotunheim fighting the frost giants, there was moment when Volstagg warned us not to let them touch us. You were busy challenging more of the frost giants, I do not know if you remember but his arm had turned the deep black of a painful frostbite. The minute he sounded the warning though, the frost giant I was fighting did exactly that, he touched my bare skin but instead of the cold burn I expected to feel all it did was turn my skin the same shade of blue as his.

I killed him the very next second and the blue receded but I can still feel the tingle on my skin." He stared at his hand with its shaking fingers as if expecting them to change in front of his very eyes. "It didn't feel like my shapeshifting magic, I could not feel anything inside me change but ever since that moment, even after I had turned back to Aesir, I felt…uneasy. Like something under my skin was scratching away, begging to be released."

Loki turned glassy eyes to Thor, lost in memory.

"Did I ever tell you I used to have nightmares of them, the Jotnar when I was small? I imagined them to be hiding in the shadows cast by the lamp in my room, that they would sneak in and steal me away. Turns out it was quiet the other way round. You see I found the casket in the armoury and picked it up wondering what would happen. Would the destroyer come to life and kill me as I turned blue, into a monster? Or would I remain my pale _weak_ little Aesir self?

That is how Odin found me. As blue as the bell like flowers that Frigga grows in her garden. He told me how the casket wasn't the only thing he had stolen from the temple. There was me as well, a runt left there to die and he 'rescued' me in an attempt to foster peace among the two realms. He should have realised that it was all for naught though, the frost giants did not accept the runt's existence why then would they accept him in whatever role Odin wanted it to fulfil? He should have killed me then itself, would have probably, only I suspect Frigga stayed his hand. Or perhaps that was the plan all along, that you should shine brighter next to the darkness that was in me. I do not claim to understand Odin's thoughts.

Before he could explain anything to me however he fell into Odinsleep. Right there on the stairs to the armoury, just my luck. And with you on Midgard and Frigga needed at his side the burden of the throne fell to me. Your friends weren't too happy about any of this of course and asked me to bring you back. As if it were that simple." Loki scoffed and finally looked at Thor, stopping mid-pace. The god looked, ironically, like he had been struck by lightning; shock, horror and pain somehow mixing on his face harmoniously. "What now?" Loki rolled his eyes at the blonde idiot.

"I…you cannot truly believe father to be so ruthless?!"

"Of course I can. He admitted to kidnapping a dying child to further his political stronghold, why shouldn't I believe him to be ruthless?"

"But he didn't use you. Loki, I do not understand why you keep insisting that he doesn't love you."

He took a deep breath pursing his lips tightly before breaking into a fake, large smile. "My mistake, at my trial as Loki _Laufeyson_ I'll be sure to give Odin some time to profess his undying love for me." Loki had not forgotten how Willow's invitation had been worded but judging by Thor's flinch he had. "May I continue Prince Thor?"

He may have begun telling the story reluctantly but now Loki realised that he truly needed this. He would continue to talk even without an audience because the more he said these things out loud the better grip he had on his own mind, the more real they became and he could finally separate the truth from the lies Thanos had planted in his head.

The real problem was that that weren't that many lies to begin with. The wretched conclusions Loki had come to were mostly of his own making, there was very little Thanos had had to do to inspire his anger. Corrupting his memory so that Thor had thrown him off the Bifrost rather than how it had actually happened was really quite a nice touch, Loki had to admit. Not only did it help Loki hate Midgard as Thor's favoured realm it also made him feel like he had actually wanted to live. He could appreciate the subtlety of it as it tainted the way he saw his past just so.

"Of course, my apologies." Thor said.

"Where was I? Oh yes, your idiot friends with no understanding of Seidr asked me to repeal your punishment. Never mind that the Allfather whom they all love and respect deemed it to be a suitable punishment, never mind that undoing an enchantment that was not one of my own weaving was foolhardy and potentially harmful to anyone involved and never mind that the relatively peaceful co-existence between two world had been shattered when we went in to kill them with you at the helm." Loki snorted. "Imbeciles, the whole lot of them.

With Odin asleep Asgard was particularly vulnerable especially since fear of him was the only thing that had kept Laufey at bay. I had to act as King and I did so in my own way, with tricks and manipulation. I got him to Asgard under the guise of a coup and then killed him. It was almost poetic, killing my birth father in front of the one who raised me. "

Thor sighed, rubbing a hand over his face and burying his head in it. "Loki this is not…When you came to me on Midgard you said that father was dead, that the banishment and threat of war was too much for him to take."

"Yes, a petty thing on my part but I was angry and wanted to hurt you, make you feel pain. It seemed as good a ploy as any."

"Brother why-?"

And this he could handle, the plaintive pleas, this sudden need of Thor's to understand and yet the lack of ability in him to do so. This he could handle, this he could get angry with.

"_You_ started the war with Jotunheim, _you_ got banished to Midgard as punishment and yet somehow I was the one dealing with the consequences of it all. Why was I the one in pain while you played around with your mortals, why was I the one having to curb a war that had all started just because you took offense to someone calling you a princess, like a little child?! Why Thor, do you only remember the wrongs that were done unto you but not the crimes you committed."

"I was in another realm, lost and confused, stripped of my powers and you thought I did not suffer?!" Thor yelled, his hand gripping Mjolnir hard but Loki merely bared his teeth, his voice a bare hiss in comparison to the thunder of Thor's.

"Suffer? It was two days amongst people who considered you an ally! How is that suffering when that is simply how I have spent my eternity on Asgard? Lost, confused and outcast, that is not suffering Odinson, that is simply life. My life, to be exact."

Thor looked at him with stricken eyes, all the fight gone from him but even then he did not understand, Loki could see it in his eyes and angrily he ran a hand through his hair. You can describe a sight to a blind person but they wouldn't truly see it and so it was with Thor, Thor who had only ever been strong would never understand weakness, always put up on a pedestal with spotlights on him, he would never understand what it was like to skulk in the shadows.

And Loki was getting tired of trying to explain it, tired of telling his story to one who would never understand, only pity and decided to end it there.

"The rest is plenty obvious, your friends ignored orders I dealt with them like the King deals with traitors, they didn't die, you came back and the rest you were there for so I do not see the point of continuing this any further."

"You tried to kill them."

"What is the usual punishment for traitors Thor?" Loki asked in a tired voice.

"Execution, but they-"

"You oaf, this is what the king does, he is fair and just and unbiased. Tell me do you think it to be common palace guards who leak state secrets to enemies or trusted advisors? Did you not realise when we watched Hofi being sentenced to death that he was once Odin's friend? I should not have to explain to you that betrayal means the breaking of trust and that requires there to be trust to begin with!"

"And when you tried to destroy Jotunheim with the Bifrost? Did you not feel any regret then?"

"Tell me Odinson, how did the people of Asgard react when they found out you had broken the Bifrost so as to save the Frost Giants from complete annihilation? Did they rejoice, adulate you for your compassion for the beasts? Or did they whisper that the favoured son had gone mad from his time on Midgard, to break the Bifrost just to save the lives of some lowly Frost Giants?"

Thor's jaw clenched and a muscle on his neck jumped and that was plenty answer for Loki.

"Ah I see, it was the second was it not. Doubtless some of the council must even commend me for my actions, cowardly though it was not to engage them in battle. And you expect _me_ to feel regret?"

"I-"

"What is it that you want Thor, truly?"

"I want my brother back." The blonde said in an almost sob and Loki sighed.

"Too many things have happened, too many secrets revealed for that." He was almost gentle even though Thor felt the blow of the words like anvils striking down on him. "Besides, for all you know I won't even live long enough to be redeemed. Asgard isn't known for its kindness especially to frost giants."

"You aren't-"

"It's the trial of Loki Laufeyson. Save your optimism for someone else."

"I will not let that happen. Neither will Lady Willow."

"Lady Willow has not yet agreed to some to Asgard. I do not blame her for that."

Thor stood taller then, stronger, his eyes flinted over with determination. Loki had seen this stance before and it had usually led to some horrendous consequences for everyone involved. Ignoring Loki's dismay he continued. "Then I shall convince her otherwise." He said and stormed out, red cape fluttering into nothing and suddenly Loki was all alone in his cell and he smacked his hand onto his forehead.

"I'm doomed."

* * *

"Sir, Director Fury's on the line." JARVIS announced. In the lab they were in Bruce immediately stopped working but Tony remained thoroughly engrossed.

"Umm, aren't you going to get that?" The meek scientist asked and Tony put away the blowtorch and lifted the mask off his face, all of it just to make his confusion at that statement as obvious as possible.

"Why the hell would I want to do that?"

Bruce floundered. For all that he could think of some very good reasons to do so he could still understand why Tony wouldn't want to do it. Every talk they had with Fury ended in mass destruction, it was just better to let Clint and Natasha talk to him.

"Sir, my protocols are being overridden."

"Damn it-" Before Tony could finish, JARVIS' voice was replaced by Fury's.

"Stark." Fury barked and Tony took a long breath mouth twitching with anger.

"Popeye if you don't want me to hack into your systems then stop getting into mine."

"I need to talk to Willow."

"She's gone. Left about half an hour after Thor did."

Fury cursed quietly."Did she say where she was going?"

"Nah, just something about her grandmother." Tony waved ignoring the fact that Fury couldn't actually see him.

"Juniper?" Bruce and Tony hadn't quite realised Fury had the ability to vocalise such palpable fear in one word.

"She didn't give us a name but I think she just has the one grandmother so. Mind telling us what this is about?"

"Odin's crows are here. I don't speak bird and Thor's still talking to Loki."

"Director we've got some questions about Willow." Bruce said.

"I'm afraid that's classified."

"Yeah I call bullshit on that, I've seen all the files S.H.I.E.L.D. has and there's practically nothing about her there." If Fury was going to lie to them he should really be doing a better job than that, for someone who was _the_ spy he lacked the subtlety that Romanoff employed.

"We just want to ask a few questions." Bruce said softly bringing the big guns out when Fury failed to respond. "The Other Guy reacts weirdly to her." Tony held up his hand in a thumbs-up at the blatant manipulation.

After a brief pause Fury spoke. "What do you want to know?"

"She said she's known S.H.I.E.L.D. for ten years, I was wondering in what capacity."

"Ten years ago I was not involved with S.H.I.E.L.D. I was working with the CIA."

"You're really telling me you don't know why she hates you all so much?"

"What I'm telling you, Stark, is that all my information is outdated and corrupted." Fury said, momentarily angry before calming down again. "The person in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D. then was Driscoll Jakeman."

"Son of a bitch!" Tony didn't know of S.H.I.E.L.D. back then but being a vital part of the arms race he had heard Jakeman's trial on several accounts of illegal military operations, torture and abuse of power and did not truly want to know what Willow had undergone under his instructions.

"How did you keep her from teleporting?" Bruce asked, clearly unaware of who Jakeman was, then again Tony wasn't surprised that the higher ups had managed to keep it from the press.

"We can't be sure; everyone involved in the operation is dead or mentally incapacitated. But from what we understand, a low voltage shock collar was on her for most of the duration to keep her from clear thinking."

"Shock therapy." Bruce said flatly and took off his glasses, the act of cleaning the lenses calming him just a little bit. "And how long was she kept like this?"

"Almost a day."

"A day of sustained electrical shocks." Bruce went alarmingly still, the way he usually did before the Hulk came out to play and Tony surreptitiously moved whatever they had finished building of the Tesseract device.

"They were designed to keep the pain and injuries minimal while making the subject more…pliant."

"So what happened then?" Tony asked quickly, afraid any lingering on the subject might bring the jolly green giant out.

"When she escaped there weren't any survivors left."

"Wait, you're telling me that Willow, who apologised to me this morning for making my coffee too hot, killed everyone there?"

"No. Maybe. We don't know. A volcanic fissure destroyed the entire facility and everyone there was killed instantaneously by hot lava flooding the facility. So when Willow appeared on our radars a few months later we were surprised, she had been assumed to be killed along with everyone else."

"Why was it built on an area of active volcanic activity?"

"It wasn't." There was an undercurrent of wry amusement in Fury's voice.

"You're telling me that the earth simply split open and swallowed it whole and it didn't make the news?"

"It was a secret facility Stark and a few hours later, all S.H.I.E.L.D. bases were attacked same M.O., natural disasters ranging from floods, hurricanes, highly localised earthquakes and more. All data, digital or analog was lost with just enough proof of Jakeman's crimes kept safe and leaked to all intelligence agencies. He was tried and executed shortly after and I was appointed the new director of S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Yeah but do you really think she did it?" Bruce began pacing and Tony breathed sigh of relief. A pacing Bruce was a calm, thinking Bruce.

"It was doubtful but we couldn't rule it out. Things…happen around her, she may not be the one actually making it happen but they still do. I sent Agent Romanoff after her to find out what she could and nothing in her psych profile suggests she's capable of any of this. Once she found out that Natasha was a spy though another one of our bases came under attack by nature and we lost all the information we had on Willow again, Agent Romanoff barely surviving. Her grandmother, Juniper paid me a visit; she all but claimed responsibility for the attack and implied that if Willow was compromised again..." He trailed off and Tony and Bruce exchanged a look. "Willow won't hurt a fly but she has some seriously powerful players backing her up. I don't want to piss them off."

* * *

_"So what should I do Grammy? Should I go to Asgard?"_

_"Of course."_

_"Are you sure?"_

_"When am I not?"_

_"Well there _was_ that time with the cow."_

_"Apart from that one time. But before you go bring the boy here, I want to talk to him."_

_"Wait, you want me to bring him here? Loki? Here?"_

_"Which part of that confuses you, my sweet?"_

_"Well all of it really. Why do you want to talk to him?"_

_"Many reasons."_

_"Care to share them with me?"_

_"Not particularly, no."_

_"So you want me to bring Loki, the guy who tried to take over the world and is now being held by S.H.I.E.L.D. in a cell, here. Fury's not going to like that."_

_"No he isn't."_

_"If there was ever a reason to do anything at all, it's that."_


	14. Chapter 14

******Disclaimer: I own nothing but Willow.**

* * *

_Green is for chlorophyll_

_by Arasinyah_

_Chapter_ _14_

"So you are coming to Asgard after all." Loki made conversation as they trudged up the small hill, densely covered in trees. He had been surprised when an hour after Thor's departure Willow had come skipping in with Fury and his brother in tow and promptly announced that she had someone she'd like him to meet. Not as surprised as he had been when Fury interrupted her to remind her they should be leaving soon. Instead of putting the muzzle and chains back on and leading them to whatever vehicle Fury had deemed capable of holding him though Fury and the rest had simply stood there, tense while she took his hand in hers and then teleported them to this hill.

"I was convinced to do that, yes."

Loki raised an eyebrow, sceptical. "Thor got through to you then?"

"She snorted. "No I tuned him out, he gets very theatrical and emo when it comes to you. It was my Grammy, whom we are going to meet soon actually."

"And how exactly did she convince you?"

"She said it would be a good experience for me to come to terms with my relative immortality and Asgard would help with that."

He looked at her, shrewd. "That's not all she said, is it?"

Willow sighed. "She said that I would have a big role to play in events to come."

"And this troubles you?"

She shrugged, twisting her mouth. "My world is beautiful and vast, unending even but my place in it is small."

Loki had felt small all his life as well, especially when surrounded by the beacons of Asgardian ideals, Thor and Odin and Frigga but for him it had been terrifying not comforting and he could not understand her fears. But even then he didn't understand how she could think her place in the world to be small, were it not for her act of kindness in the battle with the Chitauri dozens of lives would have been lost.

"You can't seriously believe that?"

"I'm more plant than person, better off in the background."

"Why in Helheim would Fury let you take me out of his clutches though? Is he not of sound mind?"

"To quote Tony, 'Jury's out'." She laughed but then stopped abruptly. "Actually the jury may really be out; the World Security Council is weird like that. But Maria did say they have blackmail on the council so who knows."

"…What?"

"There is actually a distinct possibility that he is not of sound mind."

"What did you tell him to convince him to let me go?"

"Why do you assume he needed convincing, maybe I just asked and he said yes?"

"Unlikely. He may be willing to give in to your whims but not to this extent."

Willow stopped and thanked a vine that had unfurled itself from around a tree to give her a hand over a trench before answering him. "I may have said that if you don't go with me then she come to meet you at S.H.I.E.L.D. The others were more than happy to let the latter happen but Nick was adamant. "

Loki stopped in his tracks. "I tried to take over the world."

"What's your point?" She asked puzzled as they stood in the middle of the tree cover. A snake had wound itself around her arm but as she patted its head he concluded that it was a friend and continued.

"Well, given the magnitude of my crime I am frankly offended that a mere mortal induces more fear than I do."

She raised an eyebrow. "You know, she raised me."

"What's _your_ point?"

"She raised me for the past 138 years. Not a mere mortal then. Actually," She tilted her head thoughtfully. "I don't know how old she is, never got around to asking her especially after Uncle Oscar started crying. She might be older than you even."

He scoffed. "Doubtful."

"Why?"

He didn't have an answer for that. Given what he knew or rather didn't know it was actually well within the realm of possibilities, highly probable even. Loki didn't quite like the idea. He had learnt over the years that the older a person was, the more powerful they were and he was not quite happy with the idea of someone on Midgard being more powerful than him. The Avengers may have defeated him but they did so as a collective, if an individual here had more power than him then that left him no space for negotiation, that left him vulnerable.

Still he supposed he shouldn't have been surprised. One of the perks of his superior hearing meant that he heard a lot more than anyone thought he did, soundproofed walls or not. He had heard Fury's conversation with Stark and the Hulk and it had been fairly informative. The news of Willow's detainment had come as some surprise; while she wasn't fond of S.H.I.E.L.D. he could not help but wonder why she would collaborate with them if they had treated her so. And even beyond that, that she could and would cause such destruction to get out seemed odd as well.

A day of electrical shock didn't seem like much to someone like him, even before his sojourn with the Chitauri and The Other he had been Thor's brother and when you were a playmate to someone who summoned lightning all the time you grew immune to shocks. But for her it must have been agonising. He could understand why she had destroyed everything in her path though he still couldn't reconcile the actions with the person in front of him.

They began their hike up the hill again and eventually the curiosity got the best of him.

"Did you really kill everyone at the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility you were held in?"

He could twist and turn his words, wrap them with a pretty bow. Silvertongue he may have been but he had an inkling she would realise and not be happy with him for that.

"No I didn't! What story have you been hearing, are the younger agents telling tales again?"

Loki recounted the entire conversation he had overheard.

"I didn't do any of that, even if I wanted to I can't do that! All I do is talk to plants and animals and living beings I can't just get the ground to split open and flood things with lava!"

"Are you suggesting that happened spontaneously?"

"No when I went missing my family split up into search parties and began looking for me. Uncle Oscar found me, he caused the Earthquake and got me out and Elsie did the lava bit. She was pretty angry over what they did."

"And you weren't?"

"Well, not exactly? I mean it hurt sure but I wasn't surprised. People barely manage to accept the small differences between them I never expected them to just accept me. They didn't know anything about me or my abilities and it scared them so they lashed out."

"Your Uncle Oscar can cause Earthquakes and this Elsie person can create lava?"

"Yep. It sounds so dramatic doesn't it? Like a family of superpowered beings somehow finding each other. Apparently there was some war many years ago that brought them all together and they decided to stick together since then. They're all old you know, they've known each other for centuries, I'm the baby in every sense of the word not just because I'm young but because they raised me. When they found out about Jakeman and S.H.I.E.L.D. they got angry and then all that happened.

I don't condone their actions but part of me is really glad that they did that, that all those people are dead. It's not about me, I mean sure the shock collar was bad and it hurt but there were others in the cells all around me that went through a lot worse. They kept on projecting their pain and it was a _lot_ of pain they were in.

The worst part wasn't that there were others being tortured or that I was kept there but the people who were doing it? They didn't feel anything at all. Not even some sadistic pleasure, no regret, nothing. It was like every single sociopath in the world was there. I find it hard to feel bad about their deaths. Because if they were alive it would be someone else strapped to the chair I was in being hurt, someone else being tortured two doors away and screaming their heads off until very suddenly they couldn't scream anymore. So for that, for all those that would have otherwise been hurt I am glad that everyone in that S.H.I.E.L.D. facility died."

He hated her a bit in that moment. Where did she get off being so selfless and sacrificing? She was held captive and tortured for a whole day straight and all she could think of was the pain of others? He hated to see such virtuousness in Thor and he hated seeing it in others as well.

"I hate what Natasha did more though. That really just makes me so angry at her. And S.H.I.E.L.D. and Fury, I hate him so much. And for the most part I'm not even capable of hate, it's too exhausting an emotion. They make me so mad, sometimes I mention my Grammy just to see them get scared. Does that make me a bad person?"

Maybe he didn't hate her after all.

"I'm not the best person to make that judgement."

She laughed."That's actually why I wanted you to make that judgement." By then they had finally reached the top of the hill. "Oh look we're almost there. We just have to go down and through the fields and then through that cluster of trees right there." She pointed at a point far away enough to warrant a question.

"Why couldn't we just teleport there?"

"I'm not allowed to teleport in the house and anywhere near the house because the crops act wonky. Grammy said that the last time I teleported away in the middle of the field they refused to grow because they were sad."

"You're joking." He said flatly.

"Not really. You know you're the only person who knows about them, my family. Mainly because you asked, no one ever asks. You would think the first thing S.H.I.E.L.D. would ask would be 'Are there any more like you' but no they just wanted to know how I do what I do."

Loki shrugged. "I collect secrets. Many of them in fact, the things I know about Asgard's golden men and women would have everyone turning away from them in disgust. Perhaps that is why I am so hated when they see me they see everything they wanted to hide away."

"Oh."

He turned to her, all wicked curving smile that made her lower lip jut out in a pout. "What are your secrets Lady Willow?" He said in a smooth low voice and she blinked.

"I don't have any secrets. I don't even have much of a life."

"No?"

"Well no. I…Do you know, this is the longest I've ever been around people? Four days. I haven't stayed anywhere long enough to …" She smiled wanly. "But I don't think I'm the type of person who can keep my secrets anyway. I'd probably just blurt them out if I had any. Like I just did."

It was a strange realisation he made then, that she was lonely, just as lonely as he was. But she didn't even know it because she had lived with it all her life, ever since she had, as she said, 'come to be' in that orchard all alone. She didn't know anything else, didn't even recognise it as loneliness and he wasn't quite sure if he was sorry for her or envious.

"We're here!" She said and began running up to her home the one form the memory she'd left with the Mid Gem (Erika, a voice in his head reminded him), the same beige brick walls, same ivy growing on the side though it was also blooming with flowers now and same little hothouse with its glass walls peeking over the edge.

He followed behind her slowly, unsure of himself even as she flung the door open and ran inside.

"Grammy! I got him."

"Are you just going to stand there all day?" A voice beckoned and making his mind up Loki stepped in. He was curious as to the person who would send S.H.I.E.L.D. in such paroxysms of fear and so he walked in bracing himself.

He had decided to clear his mind of any pre-conceived idea of what she might be like but he was still taken aback although not particularly by the way she looked. Admittedly for someone who was called grandmother she didn't look the part, hair still black except for one lock that had gone gray, bluer than blue eyes and a face clear of any wrinkles except for the ones around her eyes and mouth. The mortals wouldn't have thought her to be a day over forty really but Loki could see now why Willow thought her to be older than him, there was something about those eyes that said that they had seen a lot.

"Willow you should go pack for your trip to Asgard."

"I already did that." Since the second she had stepped over the threshold Willow had gone from understanding woman of a century to impatient child of four, bouncing on the balls of her feet almost constantly.

"Yes, I saw what you packed and you'll have to re-pack. Asgard isn't really that fond of bare ankles."

Loki raised an eyebrow at the woman's knowledge of Asgard even as Willow protested wildly.

"That's ridiculous!"

"And before you go on a rant about how sexist it is, it goes for all ankles, male or female, only horses are exempt from this rule."

"It's still ridiculous!"

"As Midgard's ambassador you will not be held to Asgardian traditions." Loki said smoothly.

"But you should pick your battles wisely and they might take you a bit more seriously if you're willing to work with their rules instead of breaking them." Her grandmother added. "There are some long dresses in the attic, go look there and take your time. I want to talk to this young man."

Loki knew that tone, Frigga used it whenever she was amused by what he did but had to discipline him all the same. It made his heart ache for home (was it home?) just a little bit more. Willow took the words to heart and ran up the stairs taking them two at a time and as the two stared at one another loud thunking sounds came from right above them where, presumably, she was moving around some heavy trunks.

He would have like dot say they both were sizing each other up but that would be untrue. She seemed to have the measure of him already and was simply waiting for him to come to terms with the balance of power and make his own little deductions about her form what he could see and it was unnerving.

"Milady, allow me to introduce myself-"

"I know who you are." Came the sharp yet amused answer and she watched him with laughing eyes and he smiled his most charming polite smile, the one that had won him the heart of a young lady Fandral had once been chasing.

"Still, I would not be so remiss in my manners as to not even greet the lady of the house."

"Perhaps in hope that I would return the favour and introduce myself hmm?"

"I should like to address you as you deserve milady." He said, smoothly bending over the hand she had presented to him and laid a kiss on the knuckles earning him a knowing look and a laugh.

"Just like your father." She said and he nearly keeled over in surprise.

"I…I beg your pardon?"

"I've met your father. Or rather fathers, both of them some twisted pieces of work really. Although one of them is dead isn't he? At your hands even. I thank you for that Silvertongue though I would that you had taken the other one out as well."

"How do you know all this?" He asked, tongue suddenly thick. The things she knew weren't exactly common knowledge on Asgard let alone on Midgard and yet she knew, she knew things that even Willow didn't.

"You'd be surprised at what I know boy, your Heimdall isn't the only one who sees all."

"But you claim to have met both Laufey and Odin and I do not understand quite how that is possible." He wondered, breathless. Since the Great War when the Frost Giants had been stripped of the Casket, they had been unable to travel through the gaps in space to other realms.

"I was here when they went to war."

Willow was right then, her grandmother was older than him.

"The Great War, you have witnessed it?"

She shrugged. "Witnessed it, fought in it. Of course the side I fought on was subject to change, the Aesir rubbed me the wrong way with their high handedness and the Jotunn, well their urge to freeze everything in sight wasn't quite to my taste."

"But you fought with the Jotunn? They wanted to take over Midgard and the rest of the nine Realms."

"And who's to say the Aesir did not?" Loki sat down, quite unable to take the thought that his life had been an even greater lie than he'd thought it to be. "Still we did drive them out didn't we?" She continued in an almost reminiscent tone.

"I don-I don't understand."

"Well you didn't honestly think that your heritage was the only thing Odin lied about, did you?" She trailed off looking at his shocked face with nary a hint of surprise, as if she had known exactly how this conversation would go. "Ah I see that you did. Well you'd be wrong boy."

"So what really happened then?"

"With the Jotunn-Aesir war? Well it wasn't really a war in the beginning, simply a war game, a playful little skirmish to quench their bloodthirst but neither wanted to cede any advantages to the other by having the war on either one of their home realms so they came to use Earth, Midgard if you will, as their battlefield. This did not make me or my friends very happy seeing as how the Aesir destroyed everything with fire and the Jotunn kept on freezing anything in their paths. They were tearing our world apart so we stopped them first form the inside by spreading false information and then by attacking their diminished forces. We sent them packing soon enough but apparently the Aesir thought it an outrage that the Jotunn would use the casket to simulate their own realm on Midgard and so continued waging war on them, now on Jotunheim. Bloodthirsty lot, the whole of them and then they rewrite history to make themselves seem to be the defenders, really." She shook her head. "Honesty I'm surprised that Odin has any allies left at all, he's bled most of them dry. I can't wait for Ragnarok to come, let's see how Odin survives that without any of his allies." She said gleefully while Loki's world crashed down around him.

"So everything we learnt was a lie?"

"Most of it was. Didn't you wonder why he was so angry at you for coming to Midgard all those centuries ago? Why no Asgardians have been allowed here at all?"

"But he sent Thor here to learn his lesson."

"After stripping him of all his powers, after millennia had passed since the war and only once the world had gotten to a point where the Gods of old had been forgotten." She looked at him carefully, a smile playing at the edge of her lips. "You're taking this quite well."

He shrugged before baring his teeth in a sinister smile. "Secrets don't stay secret for very long. I look forward to seeing Thor and his companions reactions when they find out they've also been lied to their whole lives."

Chaos would reign and there was really nothing more that he could ask for. Suddenly he was rather looking forward to going to Asgard. The message Odin had sent over with Huginn and Muninn had said that Willow was to be part of the Conclave that would decide his punishment and he was certain that even if she couldn't stop them from executing him she could certainly delay them long enough for him to get up to some mischief. Yes, this would be fun after all.


End file.
